When Bray Wyatt won the WWE Championship for the first time off of John Cena at the Elimination Chamber Pay Per View in February, it seemed like fortunes had finally changed for “The Face of Fear”. But ever since moving to WWE Raw, Wyatt has been involved in meaningless feuds with no storyline, and it’s come to a point where fans are getting tired of seeing him on their screens.
Having watched him in the ring and on the mic over the years, there is little doubt in my mind that Bray Wyatt is an excellent performer. His delivery in promos are spot-on, and back when he was portrayed as a legitimate threat, those promos did mean something.
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Apathy surrounding Wyatt’s character and booking have plagued “The Eater of Worlds” for the past couple of years, but that apathy has turned into annoyance. Not only do most of his matches fall flat, but you can feel the wind being sucked out of the arena during his matches. The Twitter reactions are, of course, worse.
None of this is because Wyatt is a bad performer, but it has to do with the fact that the WWE has let him slip into a situation where nothing he does seems to matter. His words and his feuds are thrown together, carry no weight, and don’t progress anywhere. It’s impossible to care, and it’s just as hard not to feel like his current program with Finn Balor is beneath the first-ever Universal Champion.
Back when he led the “Wyatt Family” as a dangerous cult leader, his feuds with “The SHIELD” and Daniel Bryan were among the best stories going. Even more recently before the Wyatt Family officially disbanded, his long-running program with Randy Orton was enticing.
Wyatt’s championship victory at the Elimination Chamber allowed him to secure some impressive victories on SmackDown Live, including a successful title defense against Cena, and it positioned “Sister Abigail” as one of the premier finishers in WWE. Orton’s subsequent turn on Wyatt provided us with one of the most heated segments of 2017 (both literally and figuratively). Watching Orton burn down the Wyatt Compound was excellent, but it was surpassed by Wyatt’s commitment to character. His pleas and painful screams as the remains of Sister Abigail burned were a perfect example of just how much Wyatt invests into this character.
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Unfortunately, it’s a character that has fallen flat, and it’s an inexplicable turn of events that had its roots in Wyatt’s loss to Orton at WrestleMania 33. The loss itself was tough as the match fell flat, but we all expected Orton to win the title.
What stings more is the fact that the mystique around the Wyatt character has completely faded, because what is a cult leader without a cult? When he moved to WWE Raw, he did so without Erick Rowan, Luke Harper, or anybody else at his side. His meandering promos carried some menace with extra bodies behind him, but his words about being a “god” fall completely flat now. He’s never won in the past, but when you combine that with his lack of a supporting cast, nothing about his character feels convincing.
We like to talk about how Wyatt’s lack of wins are the biggest reason for the audience’s inability to take him seriously, and it’s true that the losses hurt his credibility. However, Wyatt has always been a stronger character than a winner, and it’s the former that has fallen to the wayside. Remember, he did beat Seth Rollins at Great Balls of Fire in a match that was supposed to begin a feud, and he even beat Rollins again on the following episode of Raw. He’s also split 50/50 booking with Finn Balor, and while Balor figures to win the additional blow-off match after conquering Wyatt at SummerSlam, the fact that Wyatt secured even one victory over Balor is a strong statement.
The problem with these feuds isn’t that Wyatt has been booked poorly in the ring. No, the problem is that he fought two popular superstars for no reason. I still can’t come up with any sort of explanation for why Wyatt decided to go after Rollins, and, judging by the weak promos he cut during their brief rivalry, I’m not sure he could either.
Although it hasn’t been as out-of-the-blue, Wyatt’s feud with Balor has been constructed just as poorly. Back when Wyatt first joined Raw, he was still locked in his feud with Orton and had a rematch with him (just not for the championship) at Payback. He cut a promo on the TitanTron about Orton, yet he interrupted Balor. This made it seem like Wyatt would immediately move to a feud with Balor, but it literally took more than three months for that feud to begin.
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The feeling among the fans is that Balor needs something much better than this feud with Wyatt, which is startling considering that Wyatt was the WWE Champion six months ago. ESPN.com’s KC Joyner has a piece detailing the four types of heat in wrestling, and it’s clear to me that Wyatt has “Go-away” heat. At this point, he doesn’t feel like a devilish cult leader or imposing figure, but rather a man who has lost his way and has been reduced to randomly picking fights by going on rants that resemble a senile old man’s musings.
A few weeks ago, Balor said that Wyatt doesn’t care about wins and losses – only scaring people. Well, he isn’t doing a good job of scaring people either, and the audience knows it.