Bray Wyatt Has Become WWE’s Lovable Loser by Brandon Lasher

I was happy on February 12th.

Bray Wyatt had finally won the big one. Without any help, the “Eater of Worlds” had pinned John Cena and AJ Styles in an Elimination Chamber match with the WWE Title on the line. Was the WWE finally getting behind the talented performer who has been on the losing end of feuds for nearly four years? Would they support the guy with the coolest entrance in the modern era and the one who was still, after years of terrible booking, loved by the fans? The answer became clear when he had his house burned down and lost the WWE Title to Randy Orton at WrestleMania while showing Orton some creepy-looking bugs. Orton was not impressed.

As Bray is preparing for his “House of Horrors” match at Payback this Sunday, I am saddened. I am sure the match will have it weird elements but Randy Orton the 15 year veteran, will win again in Wyatt’s gimmick match. Either it is a title match and Wyatt cannot win because of his move to the Raw brand or it is a non-title match (it is hard to decipher on the WWE website) and Wyatt has nothing to gain either way. With Lesnar and Strowman near the top of the Raw brand, Wyatt will have little to do after Payback.

It is a shame. The fans love Bray and it remains a big deal every time he appears. It just seems for some reason the WWE never gets behind their charismatic cult leader. Since they had a lengthy career for another unique supernatural character in the Undertaker, I cannot fathom why Bray has been treated with such terrible booking decisions over the year. He is the lovable loser who talks a big game, uses cool special effects and always loses. It is a sad state of affairs for Bray.

Here are some reasons why Bray Wyatt is the lovable loser in the WWE:

He Rarely Wins

I understand the idea that wins and losses shouldn’t be the only thing we look at in terms of success in pro wrestling. A wrestler could struggle for years until finally getting that all important breakthrough. But when a character’s whole gimmick is making people afraid then he needs to show it through being unstoppable from time to time. Bray Wyatt is the world’s worst scary person. He is the monster who rarely ever wins. It would make for a bad horror movie.

You could start with his WrestleMania history. At WrestleMania 30 he tried to turn Cena into a monster and failed miserably. At WrestleMania 31, he wanted to be the “New Face of Fear” and lost to the 50-year-old Undertaker. At WrestleMania 32, he didn’t even have a match, but was pushed back by the basically retired The Rock and then injured John Cena. If you throw in his clean loss to Randy Orton at this year’s show, you can see he has been a failure time and time again on the biggest stage of the year.

This isn’t something the usually changes during the course of the year either. He was once literally buried by John Cena, lost to Chris Jericho when Jericho was on a brief three month return and even last year lost to 48-year-old Kane. The same Kane who really hasn’t been in the WWE since that match occurred at No Mercy 2016. Those long-winded Wyatt speeches mean nothing if you can’t back it up.

He is the World’s Worst Cult Leader

I looked up the definition of a cult leader once in the Webster dictionary. It states “great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work”. In the WWE we have had a stable called “The Wyatt Family”. Since Bray Wyatt is the only character in the WWE with that last name I think I can safely assume he’s the cult leader who his followers should have a great devotion to. The question I always ask is what is the point of his cult?

It doesn’t really seem to have any real purpose short of following Bray around and having a cool entrance. Your reward for being in his cult seems to be maybe visiting his creepy shack and losing lots of single matches on WWE programming. It isn’t really clear the reward for following the cult leader. That should have been established years ago.

The worst of it is Bray is terrible at it being a cult leader. He has frequently “set free” his most loyal subjects in Luke Harper and Erick Rowan. What kind of stupid cult leader is going to voluntarily lose his followers? You can’t have a cult without followers, right? That would seem to be the number one rule!

He is also quite terrible at getting new member, a requirement of a cult. He had Braun Strowman, which led to nothing since he wandered off to the Raw brand to greater success. His two attempts to gain new members in Daniel Bryan and Randy Orton ended with both of them playing Bray for a fool and telling Wyatt he had no control over them. When the cult leader is dumb enough to watch his follower burn his house to the ground, it doesn’t make him look like someone anyone would credibly follow.

He has the World’s Dumbest Powers

No match was more disappointing at WrestleMania 33 to me than the WWE Championship match. Bray Wyatt, the previously established “world’s dumbest cult leader”, was getting revenge against the “good guy” Randy Orton who burned Bray’s house to the ground. Bray gave one of his scarier promos as he rubbed the ashes of Sister Abigail on himself. I thought finally Bray’s character had evolved and finally found a route will be established as a scary monster heel. Then he used lots of bugs.

When I see bugs appear on the ring during a WWE Championship match, a lot of questions go through my mind. How does that actually help Bray win the match? If Orton is laying back down to said video projection bugs, does it have any effect on him? And most importantly, who does Bray know in the production truck that hooked him up?

Bray Wyatt showing us a bunch of bugs on a really nice projector had absolutely no effect on the match as he quickly lost to an abrupt RKO. I think most of Bray’s “powers” seem to be something someone with a video production background could have. The ability to show us bugs on the ring or edit together a creepy video is not something that impresses most wrestling fans if you don’t win.

There is a history of this sort of “powers” working. You need not look farther then the Undertaker. The Undertaker had those video tricks too, but he backed it up with lots of credible wins over the years. His supernatural character was protected on the biggest stages. If you don’t have those wins, you might as well have Bray go back to film school. He seems to have a knack for it.

Conclusion

I wrote this out of love for his unique character and my current disappointment with how little protection the WWE places on him to help keep Bray relevant in 2017. I know they could do so much more with his character if they wanted to. After all, the WWE just put over Jinder Mahal as the #1 contender to the WWE Title. It is proof that anyone could be pushed if they wanted to.

I hope we follow the buzzards again soon.
———————————————————————————————————-
Feel free to contact me at lasher@pacificu.edu. Additionally, I have my Twitter account, WWEBNRL as well. I would love hear your thoughts on Bray Wyatt. Are you as disappointed in his character as I am?