Chris Jericho Praises Bray Wyatt For Connecting With People
Chris Jericho continues to praise the late Bray Wyatt for his unique ideas and how they helped him connect with audiences.
Wyatt passed away on August 24th at the age of 36 due to a heart issue aggravated by a bout with COVID. In the days following his passing, he and his surviving family received an outpouring of support from fans, friends, and fellow wrestlers from both within WWE and without.
One person who still has plenty of stories about Wyatt he’s willing to share is Chris Jericho, who wrestled Wyatt several times on both televised and untelevised events mostly through 2014 and 2015.
On an episode of Superstar Crossover, Chris Jericho took the time to describe in detail what he liked about Bray Wyatt and why he was so special.
“Bray was like a faucet of creativity. He had so many ideas that were just pouring out of him at all times. He was very unique, and that’s why he did so good was so successful because no one really thought about wrestling the way that he did with the characters that he created and the things that he committed to that no one else could really make work.
Bray Wyatt might have been the best of them. When that started getting a little bit stale, then he goes to The Fiend [with the Firefly Funhouse]. If you pitch that to me, it’d be like, ‘What are you talking about?’ Like, how is this gonna work? But then once you see him do it, it’s like, ‘This is so great. It’s so wrestling.’
To be able to think about that, and create it and make it a thing, and there’s all these different characters, and it’s like Mr. Rogers on crack, but it’s cool. That, to me, was the best of Bray Wyatt.”
Chris Jericho hails Bray Wyatt for being such an out-of-the-box thinker that compensated for in-ring shortcomings
Despite his success as character and as a speaker, some fans did note that Wyatt didn’t always deliver in the ring. However, Jericho thinks that Wyatt’s other positives shined so bright that they made his matches “secondary”.
“It’s hard to translate that into a match. But like I said earlier, matches are almost secondary. It’s characters and connecting with people and making them want to see you perform. That’s what Bray Wyatt could do better than almost anybody in the modern era.
That’s another reason why it’s such a shame that he’s gone because I’m sure he had so many other ideas. Some good, some bad, a faucet of creativity.”
h/t Fightful