Friday, March 29, 2024
EditorialBray Wyatt's Cycle Of Ineptitude

Bray Wyatt’s Cycle Of Ineptitude

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I remember it like it was yesterday. Kane put Christian high above his head and chokeslammed him to the pavement for a victory. Afterward, a vignette aired for the Wyatt Family, and it concluded with Bray Wyatt announcing that he was in fact here, and the Wyatt Family debuted on the main roster. I remember being excited for them finally being called up after making names for themselves in NXT. However, approximately three in a half years later, it seems we always go back to square one when it comes to WWE’s resident cult leader. What do I mean by this?

WrestleMania is always a success for WWE, because it’s WWE’s biggest show. People don’t come there for great matches. They go there for the experience. It is not just a WWE PPV. It’s a music concert, an extravaganza, a fireworks special, and all of that good jazz. In recent years, it has also gotten mainstream sports media coverage. So, for all intents and purposes, WrestleMania is never a failure in WWE’s eyes. However, it was a massive failure for one Bray Wyatt. It was weird. Bray Wyatt entered the show holding WWE’s most prestigious title, the WWE Championship. Not only did I never think that Bray Wyatt would be trusted with WWE’s top championship, I never thought he would have the privilege to enter WrestleMania holding the title. I remember seeing all of the predictions articles from various news outlets, and a lot of them predicted that Randy Orton and Bray Wyatt would steal the show. I never thought it would, because I thought the claim of show-stealer would go to Shane/AJ or KO/Jericho. However, I was expecting a decent outing.
Let’s not be politically correct here. The match was an atrocity for a WWE Championship match at WrestleMania. WWE Championship matches aren’t always the best match at WrestleMania (See: 32, 29, 28, 27, 26, 25, 24, 22, 21, 20), but there is a decent standard set, because the match is supposed to be worthy of the top title that WWE has to offer. Instead of a hard-fought battle between two rivals that have been essentially going at it since September of last year, what we got was something you’d see in a video game. We had silly animations covering the ring, cartoonish antics, and a snake going down the WrestleMania entrance aisle for Randy Orton, making it look like computerized sperm.

The match had little flow or energy to it, and while the in-ring work wasn’t horrible per say, it simply wasn’t up to par or had the energy that a match the caliber of one with the WWE Title on the line should have. However, the finish came when Bray Wyatt, after supposedly playing mind games with those termites or leeches or whatever they were, took an RKO from out of nowhere. Just like that, all of the years people were waiting for Bray Wyatt to win the WWE Championship, his moment ended just like that.

Do you recall Bray Wyatt’s match with Daniel Bryan? Daniel Bryan went to WrestleMania and beat Triple H, Randy Orton and Batista on the same night to win the WWE World Championship that year, and Bray Wyatt defeated him. Let’s be reminded how over and hot Daniel was with the crowd at that time. The moment when Daniel Bryan turned on Bray after he briefly joined The Wyatt Family resulted in one of the loudest segments you’ll hear in WWE. Bray defeated him cleanly at the Royal Rumble, and I believe that was the precursor to the next big superstar. He had another marvelous performance at the next PPV that

He had another marvelous performance at the next PPV that year, when he faced off against The Shield, and he scored the winning pinfall over Roman Reigns in what was a fantastic six-man tag team match. He got past forgettable feuds against the likes of Kofi Kingston and Kane, and moved on to bigger and better things, and I honestly believed he was destined for pure greatness. Bray had great delivery on the microphone, wrestled a physical style, and a look unique to him. However, then we got to the face that runs the place, John Cena.

He had another marvelous performance at the next PPV that year, when he faced off against The Shield, and he scored the winning pinfall over Roman Reigns in what was a fantastic six-man tag team match. He got past forgettable feuds against the likes of Kofi Kingston and Kane, and moved on to bigger and better things, and I honestly believed he was destined for pure greatness. Bray had great delivery on the microphone, wrestled a physical style, and a look unique to him. However, then we got to the face that runs the place, John Cena.

Bray Wyatt called John Cena a liar and a hypocrite, questioning what his legacy in WWE truly was, just like every other challenger that Cena has had. It was pretty obvious going into the match that Bray wasn’t going over. They had video packages of Cena doing charity work, him doing Make-A-Wish foundation work, and it wasn’t a question of whether or not Cena would win. It was how he would do it. Wyatt got a redemption victory over Cena, but in a horrible steel cage match at Extreme Rules. The finale between these two came in the form of a gruesome last man standing match between the two, and while many didn’t see the need for Cena to go over, WWE apparently did because that would lead to Cena winning the WWE Title at Money In The Bank later that year. This was Bray’s second major feud that he lost that year. Technically, he did beat Daniel in their lone one on one matchup that year, but Daniel went on to prosperity so it’s as if Bray never won anything, and you know the deal with Cena.

He then moved on to Chris Jericho in a very forgettable feud, and he won a match and dropped another. However, it didn’t result in any character or career development/progression for Bray, so he was really just stalling for time. How about Dean Ambrose? When you win a match, like he did at TLC 2014, by virtue of an exploding television, there is enough to convince that it could be an omen. Bray would continue to lose feuds to the likes of Roman Reigns and The Undertaker the following year.

In Bray Wyatt’s case, different isn’t better. Different just means you’re allowed to talk about God knows what in pre-taped segments in the janitor’s bathroom. However, that doesn’t translate to major victories or meaningful runs. Bray Wyatt’s first title came in the form of the Smackdown Tag Team Championship, a title reign that lasted all of around 3-4 weeks. That title was more of a prop to facilitate dissension within the Wyatts, and not anything meant to last long. Bray won the WWE Championship in a fantastic Elimination Chamber, pinning the previous two WWE Champions, John Cena and AJ Styles in succession. You’d think that would propel his new career, but this only resulted in a brief and bad match at WrestleMania.

Now, Wyatt finds himself going back to the drawing board, and it appears as though his first feud on the RAW brand will be against one Finn Balor. Can you imagine the type of otherworldy, cartoonish segments we will have between these two? Before, I pegged Bray Wyatt as a man who could speak well and penetrate people’s conscious. Now, he’s just a man who rambles incoherently with no direction, and now he can’t be taken seriously because WWE hasn’t invested enough in him to win in a big match situation. This leads to a big question that I want to pose to all of you.

Is Bray Wyatt a failed experiment, or was he never given a fair shake?

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