WWE: 10 hilarious gimmick matches to distract you from quarantine

2. House of Horrors Match: Bray Wyatt vs. Randy Orton (Payback 2017)

Back in 2017, we saw the rise of Bray Wyatt and he captured the WWE Championship for the very first time at Elimination Chamber. Wyatt ended up facing Randy Orton, the winner of the 2017 Royal Rumble and someone who had been Wyatt’s ally earlier in the year.

It’s unfortunate things went so off the rails after Elimination Chamber, because this had the seeds of something spectacular. Orton’s alignment and eventual turn on Wyatt was fascinating to watch, but things lost the plot in the build to WrestleMania. Their clash at WrestleMania 33 included these absurd projections of of bugs onto the mat at random intervals for no discernible reason, which ultimately earned them the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Award for Worst Match of the Year. They also won the WON Award for Worst Feud of the Year.

In second place for the worst match award was the House of Horrors Match between the two. Clearly taking inspiration from Final Deletion, an innovative match in Impact Wrestling during 2016 featuring “Broken” Matt Hardy facing his brother Jeff Hardy at the Hardy Compound, the House of Horrors Match only partially took place in this separate location. It was originally a rematch for the WWE Championship that Orton had captured at WrestleMania 33, but Wyatt was drafted to Raw just before the event, and this became a non-title match.

It began at “Bray Wyatt’s House of Horrors,” with Randy Orton arriving in a limo and a chaotic brawl taking place in this less than effective version of a haunted house. Bray Wyatt ultimately dumped an entire refrigerator on Orton, leaving him for dead as Wyatt himself hopped in the limo and was driven back to the arena.

Meanwhile, WWE Payback continued with an entire match between Seth Rollins and Samoa Joe while Wyatt was driven back to the arena. Shown arriving after that match, Wyatt staggered his way to the ring. When the lights came up from his entrance, Randy Orton had somehow also made it to the arena and was standing behind him with a steel chair.

The match continued around the ring, only for The Singh Brothers and Jinder Mahal, who was set to challenge Randy Orton for the WWE Championship a few weeks later, interfered and attacked Orton. This left the opening for Wyatt to take the win and mercifully end one of the worst matches in WWE history.