TJR Blog #2: WWE Needs To Turn On The Lights And Unleash Bray Wyatt
It is ridiculous that Bray Wyatt isn’t a part of this Sunday’s Money in the Bank PPV or “special event” or whatever it is they want us to call their three hour specials. Even though Wyatt is considered a future main event star as well as somebody that has headlined PPV-like event shows already in his career, apparently WWE’s creative team has nothing for him these days.
What a joke. This kind of thing shouldn’t be happening. If you’re wondering, Wyatt isn’t hurt either because he works live events pretty much every weekend and he’s at the tapings too, so it’s only a creative issue.
If you include Money in the Bank, WWE has had four special events that have taken place since WrestleMania 31 and Wyatt has only had a match at one of those events. That was a win over Ryback at the May 17 Payback event. That’s the same Ryback that not only was given a spot in the Elimination Chamber match for the vacant Intercontinental Title, but he ended up winning too. It’s also the same Ryback that faces Big Show on Sunday for the IC Title while Wyatt sits around doing nothing.
Do wins and losses really matter? Of course not. It’s scripted entertainment not sport, but the idea behind pro wrestling is that it is presented as a sport where wins are “supposed” to matter just like a guy is supposed to be hurt by a punch that doesn’t connect. They’re supposed to sell us the idea that wins matter and losses hurt. Winners get rewarded with title matches while it’s considered a big deal when somebody wins a title. At least that’s the point. In Wyatt’s case, match results apparently mean nothing at all.
Why isn’t Wyatt in the Money in the Bank ladder match for a contract that earns the winner a WWE Title match? Nobody knows. His name isn’t even mentioned because…creative has nothing for him.
It’s as if they think we are idiots that are going to forget a guy that WRESTLED THE F’N UNDERTAKER at the biggest show of the year called WrestleMania. Hey fans, remember Wyatt? Well tough shit, you shouldn’t. He doesn’t matter now.
Speaking of that match with The Undertaker, Wyatt did a damn good job of building up a match where the other guy wasn’t on television and then working with a 50 year old man that shows up once a year. Wyatt performed that match on a badly sprained ankle that he hurt earlier in the day. Guys should be rewarded for working through the pain, not pushed aside. He didn’t miss significant time either.
It’s hard to really know what WWE’s creative team thinks of Wyatt. There are some weeks where he’s only on screen for about 45 seconds talking about how he’s the new face of fear while other times he’s not seen at all. Are we supposed to think that all he cared about doing in the last month was getting a win over Ryback and then after he got the win he just didn’t care about wrestling at all?
Wyatt beat Dean Ambrose on Raw on May 18 thanks to help from The Authority. At Smackdown taped the next day, he lost to Ambrose because Roman Reigns stopped the Authority from interfering and even nailed Wyatt with a Superman Punch. I thought maybe that would be lead to Wyatt feuding with Reigns. Nope. Silly me. There was no follow up at all!
Speaking of Reigns, they brought Wyatt out for the Raw main event where Reigns beat three guys in one night with Wyatt out there as the last guy. At least WWE presented Wyatt as a big deal in the main event although really if a guy isn’t on TV then he’s not much of a big deal at all. Reigns won of course and poor Wyatt was treated like a loser that was forgotten again.
What did Wyatt do at the Raw and Smackdown tapings this week? Nothing on television, but he lost to Cena during a dark match at Raw and then to Ambrose during a dark match at Smackdown.
This is going on a bit of a tangent, but the commentary for Wyatt’s entrance needs to change. Stop saying that stupid line about the lights in the arena being fireflies when he shows up. It’s probably a line fed to the announcers by Vince McMahon or some other older guy that thinks fans are dumb and thinks that saying “cell phone light” is a bad thing. Just say that Bray’s followers are lighting up the arena for him. It doesn’t have to be complicated.
There are all kinds of rumors out there about how Wyatt might turn face. It’s easy to see why because the fans are reacting to him pretty well and it’s WWE where every midcard face might turn heel and every midcard heel might turn face. That’s just how they are with the booking. The problem with a face turn is he’d be lost in the shuffle even more than he currently is.
What WWE has to realize is they have something special in Wyatt. He’s arguably the best talker among active wrestlers in the company (Paul Heyman is the best overall). The problem is he barely gets a chance to talk! In the ring he’s pretty good. Go watch his performance against Daniel Bryan at the 2014 Royal Rumble to see how great he can be in the ring too. Most of his matches with Dean Ambrose were pretty entertaining too.
Wyatt should be out there ripping people apart with his promos whether he’s mysteriously about them or specifically saying that he’s better than them. Let him deliver promos where he’s playing mindgames to get in their head before he beats them in a match. Wyatt can be the type of heel that Mankind was in the early days in the mid-1990s or Jake Roberts before him. You just have to let him deliver some promos with substance.
The way WWE has to book Wyatt is as a top heel that’s powerful in the ring, but also a manipulative jerk that gets under the skin of his opponents. He doesn’t need to be Undertaker 2.0 with all the supernatural stuff either. Just book him like he’s smarter than people he’s in the ring with.
If he was able to manipulate the minds of guys like Luke Harper and Erick Rowan in the past then he should be doing that all the time to different people on the roster. The character of Bray Wyatt should be a leader of men and even women if they can find somebody that has a look that would fit with the group.
I know that a lot of people want to see him working with his younger brother Bo Dallas because it’s not like WWE is going to really get behind Dallas a goofball heel character any time soon. That could work, but only if there’s a long term plan in place.
Wyatt’s likely going to do well in the future. He’s only 28 years old, which is pretty young in the wrestling world considering most male talents don’t peak until their mid-30s. His father is Mike Rotunda (aka Irwin R. Schyster), who has worked for WWE as an agent for nearly 20 years. He’s got a lot of job security, so it’s not like he’s a guy that is going to seek out another career when the wrestling business is in his blood. Unless he screws up somehow, he’s going to be in WWE for a very long time.
There will probably come a time in the not too distant future where creative realizes that this bearded freak of a man has a lot of talent that can be maximized, but for right now it’s so frustrating to know that he’s doing nothing.
It’s hard to know what WWE has planned for Wyatt going forward or if there’s anything at all. The reality is that WWE’s roster is pretty deep right now and you can’t push everybody, but there has to come a time when they realize how gifted this man is.
Bray Wyatt is a special talent that can be beneficial to WWE’s product. Let the man show what he can do because the new face of fear is more than ready to be unleashed. He can’t do that if he’s sitting on the sidelines waiting to get his chance.
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Let me know what you think in the comments below. I didn’t want to turn this into some fantasy booking piece. The purpose is to get people talking about Wyatt because I think it’s a shame that he’s not doing much at all. Agree? Disagree? Don’t be shy.
John Canton –mrjohncanton@gmail.com
Twitter@johnreport