I honestly don't understand what Bray Wyatt is trying to accomplish with his brand of pro-wrestling storytelling.

Ever since Bray's return, what have we learnt about him that we didn't know already?
- He has a sidekick called Uncle Howdy.
- He's invincible in the ring.

Everything else is just white noise. I assume he's going for some genius long-term storytelling, piggybacking off his previous personas, but what's in his head isn't being conveyed well to the audience.

Those two things could have been established in four weeks tops, probably a lot less, without losing any of its effectiveness, or lack thereof. Instead it's dragged on and on since September. Four months. One match. If you can call it a match.

It's not all bad. The Firefly Funhouse is an interesting, original, and compelling way to cut promos and showcase an unhinged split-personality wrestler. If he kept it at that, and got rid of all the other bullshit - The Fiend, Uncle Howdy, the gimmick matches, the smoke and mirrors, it might be a great wrestling character. Assuming he could figure it out in the ring. Maybe he can't figure it out in the ring, which is why he hides behind all his nonsense.

The Alexa Bliss angle was also far more complicated and intricate than it needed to be. Less is more. Contrast with Julia Hart's similar transformation to the dark side in AEW. Not rubbed in your face. It was subtle, nuanced, lurked in the background for a while, and at the end we have a fascinating new wrestling character. Now they're carrying on with the Alexa Bliss angle, but with no clear direction I can see, just a load of confusing white noise.

That's really what Bray Wyatt is. He wants to be a master storyteller, and he may have great ideas in his head, but to me he comes across as the failed novelist who gets drunk in a bar and rammbles his incoherent stories to his buddies who tolerate him out of loyalty.

Do you agree, or am I way off base?

So wild. I just saw some dude talk about it in TikTok saying that Bray is becoming boring to listen to and may in fact be overrated.

Might be too much reign. Can’t disagree. This storyline is hot garbage.

The moment I saw this guy on the original NXT, I said he'd make a fantastic menacing redneck (imagine you've stumbled into the worst appalachian nightmare possible and this piece of shit is stalking you relentlessly wanting to eat your children... that's the vision I had) And I wasn't far off the mark.

It proved, even an idiot like me could come up with at least one good idea. And so did he, he struck gold with that initial character and then over the years, proved he was a one hit wonder.

Maybe, they gave him too much free reign thinking that maybe one day he'll capture that magic again. But he's proven through some of the worst sports entertainment ever, he's absolutely not a creative genius in any sense. And I can't understand why they allowed this current bullshit he's producing to go to television.

And this is where you draw a line between gimmick and character. There's no great character work (see The Bloodline, Sami) he's all gimmick, floating between one and another every few years, accompanied by a stupid gimmick match to sell the stupid gimmick.

Part 2, as I'm typing on my phone.

This guy should be at his " American Badass " stage. Undertaker did and was part of all sorts of questionable storylines as the literal walking dead. But, at least that gimmick in 2000-2004 bought some humanity and realism to the character.

Bray has the tools. He looks like a badass, can talk and if he wanted, he could work a match if it wasn't riddled with shenanigans.

If a vignette ran showing Bray, sitting in some redneck dive bar and then proceeding to beat up some punks relaunching the character as a cross between his original " Wyatt Family " character, a little bit of American Badass, and his current aesthetic... I wouldn't be unhappy if that happened and a non-supernatural storyline followed.

LA Knight was one of the worst possible opponents for the feud, he is super over with the crowd and is for some reason still a heel

Which gave the audience no sympathy for Knight for any of Bray’s spooky stuff during the feud nor did Knight look particularly frightened at any point.

Stepping into the ring with Wyatt should be like the old Smackdown days, you wanna run your mouth playa?

Well you’re going one on one with Bray Wyatt!

queue opponent looking like they’ve seen a ghost.
With Wyatt only losing very sparingly & mostly kept out of the title picture unless he’s going to have dominant reign.

Kinda like Jason and camp crystal lake.




Short promos, not 5 minutes of babbling.
I know it’s been done before but it’s for a reason and it’s simple and effective.

All this extra stuff would work better in a horror film you find in the bargain bin, not with wrestling.

There are a few issues with Bray Wyatt:

1. He is not a great wrestler. He is a great character/charismatic talker who can be 'serviceable' in matches. He relies on that character to get him 'over' and hide the fact that he's not the total package.

2. He must have a good opponent who can help him suspend disbelief of his characters antics and also make up for his in ring shortcomings.

3. To a lesser degree, he requires a 'stable' like he had with The Wyatt Family in order to carry out his machinations and again make up for his lack of in ring abilities. Preferably other wrestlers who are not as charismatic, but good 'in ring' hands.

3. The Powers That Be have stopped and stalled his momentum so many times in the past years that it's annoying. Why should fans get invested in anything he's selling? This also hurt Alexa Bliss.

So now he's grasping at the straws of a mystique he once had. The luster and shine of his character's past exploits and heat have dulled and now he just sounds like a crazy, hobo ranting.

Basically, bray Wyatt is Ultimate Warrior 2020's without the success.

Yeah my issue with Bray is he is just not that good in the ring and getting worse not better. WWE is not expecting five star matches, but Bray wrestles like the crowd does not exist and is just a massive heat sink.

It also hurts him that his best gimmick, Wyatt Family Bray, he will not do anymore. He is a guy that works best with others, but he does not want to work with others as he says that reminds him of Brodie. I would not be shocked at all if this is why people say he is hard to work with in terms of creative.

I agree with him. It would be disrespectful and like they are trying to 'replace' Brodie. I don't think it would go over with the fans at all.

Besides, that gimmick has had its time.

Bray is getting top dollar without top dollar performances. He does not want to do the old gimmick than he needs to find a better one to justify what he is being paid. And this current one is costly and not delivering.

In a era where Khan is looking into selling ad space on the apron, ringside area and turnbuckles, talent needs to really be aware that not getting over while on a bigger contract means you are up to be cut.

I wonder if Bray will be stuck in the Cinnamon Toast Crunch match at WM...

Bray will be gone by this time next year.

He's been back for months, and delivered maybe 1 match and countless bullshit segments. We're 2 months out from Wrestlemania 39, and it's highly likely he's wrestling " Uncle Howdy " in perhaps the worst wrestlecrap match in history.

His mental health will be crushed by Survivor Series, as the criticism will be too much from fans and the expectations will become too high from WWE, unless someone grabs this weirdo by the ears and takes the creative control away from him, he'll fall apart again. I can't believe someone like Hunter is looking at this stuff and thinking " yeah, that's some good shit " and not thinking to himself, something needs to change.

I can see (unfortunately) a " 3 Faces of Wyatt " match down the road. With Bray as " Bray ", Dallas portraying Uncle Howdy, and perhaps someone like Joe Gacy, who has a similar body type playing The Fiend.

It will suck however.

They've been trying to tap into the Supernatural mystique of The Undertaker and at first, I thought maybe they had it with Bray and the Wyatt Family. But he also had Brodie and Eric to do the heaving lifting in ring as Bray is not agile or versatile like Taker so as a solo character...meh.

I thought maybe they could have tapped into it with Alastair Black, but I don't think pushed it far enough and then he was gone.

He should have came back and reformed the Varsity Club with Bo Dallas, Bron Steiner, Bianca Belair and the alpha academy with legit athletes like his dad did.

Feb 3, 2023 21:53:52 GMT NATH45 said:

Bray will be gone by this time next year.

He's been back for months, and delivered maybe 1 match and countless bullshit segments. We're 2 months out from Wrestlemania 39, and it's highly likely he's wrestling " Uncle Howdy " in perhaps the worst wrestlecrap match in history.

His mental health will be crushed by Survivor Series, as the criticism will be too much from fans and the expectations will become too high from WWE, unless someone grabs this weirdo by the ears and takes the creative control away from him, he'll fall apart again. I can't believe someone like Hunter is looking at this stuff and thinking " yeah, that's some good shit " and not thinking to himself, something needs to change.

I can see (unfortunately) a " 3 Faces of Wyatt " match down the road. With Bray as " Bray ", Dallas portraying Uncle Howdy, and perhaps someone like Joe Gacy, who has a similar body type playing The Fiend.

It will suck however.

Agree completely, Bray gonna get released.  He is top dollar and not delivering at all.  He is also hard to work with creatively, which was why he was released the first time.

And unless he wants a massive pay cut, Tony not gonna want him either.  

I was super excited to see Wyatt back now I’m not interested in his potential feud with Lashley at all. Or if he goes after Lesnar even less interested.



The Knight did nothing for Knight and Wyatt just brushed it off the next week on Smackdown, shame as I really enjoy Knight’s work.

So Roman Reigns says to Bray " I came up with this great angle where I sit at home for half the year and let my cousin's do the work. Top that "

Bray says, " Hold my beer, not only will I come up with a great.. "

Roman cuts in " Great? LOL Really? "

Bray continues " I know LOL, but watch this... I'll get my dumbass brother a job. Top that! "

All for main event pay too. Money was so high Tony did not want him at that price.

TK has enough guys who can't work.

Bray seems like Vince Russo if he were a wrestler. Great ideas with little structure.

Feb 24, 2023 20:05:58 GMT Ed said:

Bray seems like Vince Russo if he were a wrestler. Great ideas with little structure.

Funnily, Russo commented on Bray the other day. And he was right. Wyatt has been on TV for 10 years and should be at that Undertaker level, (assuming he meant the level Taker was at in 2001) by now, but he's not.

He noted Bray was a genius, and potentially thet have trouble writing for him.

I think the hang up is, despite talent Wyatt looks to work these supernatural gimmicks in a reality driven world. Evolution of the character never really happened, he just shifted from one supernatural gimmick to another rather than a pit stop in this world (similarly to Biker Taker) then switch back into silly mode 5 years later for the final run before retirement.

I'm going to go with "too much free reign," to answer Emperor's question, however I think we would be looking at Bray's career a LOT differently if his stories/feuds didn't stop and start so often like iron maiden said in her post.

In a lot of ways I think that's the biggest issue with how Bray Wyatt is viewed today. Because his feuds became such a mess after starting off hot so often, people stopped caring about the journey because they expected the payoff to suck.

Current Bray is a perfect example. If the Mountain Dew After Dark or whatever the fuck match happened because LA Knight had a sponsorship or something and forced it to happen, then Bray and Uncle Howdy killed him and lit him on fire, that would have been a lot more well-received. But they never explained why that match was what it was. That's a theme in Bray's career. Lots of showmanship with little context that eventually ends with a wet fart.

I think Bray Wyatt's career started on a downward spiral when he lost to John Cena at Wrestlemania 30. That never, EVER should have happened. That entire story was building to either A) John Cena breaking and becoming something he didn't want to be to beat Wyatt or B) Wyatt's mind games became too much for Cena to overcome and he loses. Neither of those things happened. And either one would have put both characters on a continued upward trajectory. Cena can regroup and get back to his roots and Wyatt can claim that win or lose, he "broke" Mr Never Give Up, and nobody in WWE was safe from The Wyatt Family.

Wyatt's character never recovered from that. Yeah, he won the title and that was nice, but that ended to Randy fucking Orton in a dumb story that ended in a weird fucking match. The Fiend? Sure, started hot. Firefly Funhouse was neat. But then that character ended because a Hell in a Cell match got called for DISQUALIFICATION. In the dumbest way imaginable.

Did those things happen because he had too much freedom? Probably. But because he was booked to lose every feud he ever went into, creative should have either reeled him in or given him a better ending. Even just once.

Firefly fun house was perfect example of the problem

I don’t know what his problem with LA Knight was, now he has set his sights on Bobby Lashley for reasons unknown. I have to keep a secret or something & Uncle Howdy is all of us.

O K ?

After this week's Smackdown

" creative genius "

I'm convinced Bray Wyatt doesn't know what professional wrestling is. Maybe he did once upon a time, but he's long forgotten.

He knows. He is doing a disruption gimmick, where he does something completely new. The problem with disruption stuff is when it does not work, it is just shit. And we had six months of this now and fans are getting sick of him.

I don't know what a disruption gimmick is.

Neither do you, and neither does Bray Wyatt.

Feb 25, 2023 23:20:46 GMT Emperor said:

I don't know what a disruption gimmick is.

Neither do you, and neither does Bray Wyatt.

I second this.

Logan Paul does the disruption gimmick. He shouldn't be there, has no right being there - but walks in a does it better than most of roster. That and 3 matches in, is a bigger star than 90% of people working in the business today.

That's being a disruptor.

Disruption is doing something out of the ordinary that if it works will change a product. Big right now in tech businesses. Some guys are trying off the wall gimmicks hoping to find that new gimmick that no one thought of that will blow the wrestling industry open. Bray thinks this mystery horror stuff could be disrupting for wrestling. It is not.

For every electric car, there is a hydrogen car. One disrupts, one fails miserably. Bray is a hydrogen car.

Bray Wyatt is a 1993 Fox body Mustang with the 2.3l 4 cyclinder engine. He's everything wrong with the 'New Generation' - he sucks.

Top dollar too. Remember Tony wanted him but could not afford him, or well, justify the hiring at the price he was asking.