Lil Yachty says the Gingerbread Man was never meant to work, and that WWE did not even come up with the name.
Yachty went through the whole thing on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, starting with how little faith anyone had in it.
“So funny, it was not supposed to work. I remember when me and Trick got in, we were like, man, y’all sure?” Yachty said. “But then we just tried to make the most of it. When I got the gingerbread shirt printed and we did the song, and we were really clowning him.”
Then the part that reframes the whole angle.
“Funny enough, they didn’t actually pitch Gingerbread Man. That was something we said, because he was ginger,” he said.
The rest of it, by his account, was built by the two of them.
“Just me and Trick clowning and calling him Gingerbread Man. Then I got the gingerbread cookies and we just had fun with it,” Yachty said. “Me and Trick, we always get on the phone or text and s***, be together and we just think of ideas. How we gonna say this? What we gonna do? We’ll spend the whole day in my dressing room just trying to figure out how we gonna clown, or what jokes we gonna make. And it just stuck, and then it turned into a thing, and it was so fun.”
He defended the funeral directly.
“I thought the Gingerbread Man funeral was so funny, and the fact that the face of the Gingerbread Man looks completely different now that he was gone. It was so silly,” Yachty said. “People forget it’s entertainment, and it’s supposed to be funny. It’s supposed to be fun, and yeah, it’s good wrestling, but it’s entertainment and fun. Have fun, man. Don’t be so uptight. Sometimes I be thinking it’s like, damn, you just want a card full of five-star matches.”
On the spot itself, he was less romantic.
“I had to practice that, bro. They had to pad my feet up so I could push. I don’t have the abs for that. That’s ab work, man,” he said. “Shout out to the Undertaker, bro. That’s ab work, sitting up.”
The character first appeared on SmackDown before WrestleMania 42, where Zayn kicked it. Williams beat Zayn for the United States Championship two days later at WrestleMania, and at his celebration the following week the Gingerbread Man turned out to be Zayn, who attacked both men with a candy cane. Zayn then destroyed the costume on the next show. Williams ran out for the save and threw up the X sign, treating it as a real injury, and Joe Tessitore announced on commentary later in the night that the cookie had died.
The funeral aired from Jacksonville on May 8, the night before Backlash. Tributes ran throughout the show. Williams came to the ring in black and poured out milk, WWE aired video packages editing the Gingerbread Man into famous moments, including Hulk Hogan slamming Andre the Giant, Steve Austin being arrested, Kurt Angle’s milk truck and Cody Rhodes beating Roman Reigns, and there was a choir. Zayn interrupted a moment of silence to complain about the cost of the casket and the singing, said SmackDown used to mean something, and attacked Williams, telling him this was not a game and that it was his life. Yachty then sat up in the casket, took the head off and hit Zayn with a candy cane kendo stick, and Williams finished with the Trick Shot. Williams retained at Backlash the next night.
Yachty is not the only one defending it. Zayn has also publicly backed the angle.
Not everyone inside the company agreed. WrestleVotes Radio reported at the time that the heavy use of the character had drawn notable pushback from some in WWE creative, with one source describing the angle as hokey and archaic. The character has not been used since, and reporting at the time suggested the criticism was why.
Yachty has been managing Williams on screen since earlier this year. The two are back in the United States Championship picture, with Williams taking the title from Baron Corbin at Sunday Night’s Main Event on September 6 after Yachty survived a five-minute challenge against Corbin earlier in the night. Zayn is now the Undisputed WWE Champion, having beaten CM Punk on the September 11 SmackDown in Mexico City.
