Looking At WWE Superstar Bray Wyatt: For Now & For The Future

A few weeks ago on RAW we all heard the first ‘boring’ chants from a WWE audience in referent to a Bray Wyatt promo, this got me thinking about his recent run since his feud with Daniel Bryan and his ultimate loss to John Cena. I’ve seen a lot of fans on Twitter playing up the usual ‘Cena burial’ argument which brought me to write about what I think WWE should do with Wyatt and his family, why I feel like people are classing his step down from the main event as a burial.

Undeniably, since his debut, Bray Wyatt has been one of the most interesting characters on the WWE roster and in my opinion he still is. First of all, I’ve seen complaints that he appears to cut the same promo week in week out with different words. To be fair, for the most part I agree but I don’t see why that is such a hindrance when some of the biggest names in wrestling did that for the majority of their career and made millions for themselves and the company, for example, how many times have you heard Hogan talk about his 27 inch pythons and Cena introduce himself with the same “my name is John Cena and the Champ is here” shtick, of course followed by the ultimate never give up and never back down worked into his promos. Despite his criticism, he’s still the biggest name in the company and is obviously in the main event. This begs the question, why does Wyatt have to come up with a completely different topic in each promo when the majority of wrestlers cut around 1 topic for the majority of their career (this isn’t criticism of Cena or Hogan). I feel like IWC especially has adopted Wyatt as the current “anti-Cena” guy and that appears to come with a risk of fans looking for negatives to appear different and cool, sort of what BEGAN to happen post-mania with Daniel Bryan.

Perhaps, the most criticism of Bray Wyatt has been since his defeat to Cena at Payback. Fans have appeared to see this as a burial which confuses me as for decades, the way wrestling works is that the superhero baby face eventually overcomes the odds and beats the heel. However, I can get the grievance that Cena overcoming the odds has been overdone so much that he doesn’t even overcome odds and it comes off as a burial. What fans haven’t seemed to think about is that the problem may be with the WWE roster or creative instead of just being with Cena ‘burying’ everyone. Currently, Bray is feuding with Jericho which is obviously a step down from Cena but the question has to be asked, who was Bray supposed to be feuding with instead? The main event has all of a sudden become stacked with Orton, Reigns, HHH and Cena all being in different feuds. I believe this is one of the reasons that fans are saying Bray has been buried because their are very few on Cena’s level to begin with so anyone other than maybe Randy Orton or HHH would seem like a step down. At the minute, it would seem like WWE need to keep heat on guys like Bray while the main event stories continue, only to use them later in the year or beginning of 2015. This is why I personally don’t think Wyatt has been ‘buried’. It is obvious to me that the WWE still have faith in him after giving him an interview segment with Jericho last night in which he was the main focus for 3/4’s of the duration. At the current moment I think Bray is pretty safe, he’s in a solid long term-ish feud with Jericho which he’ll most likely win and hopefully move onto something just as interesting. Because of this, I’m starting to think that wrestling fans, especially the smarter fans, are becoming harder to please, it appears that they NEED to have their guys going over every match otherwise there is a storm of critical tweets, not to say that criticism is never deserved though.

An idea I did have for Bray after this feud would be to win the IC or US belt. I know, what about the curse of the mid card titles? However, if treated right, I think it could be very successful. For instance, have Wyatt beat Miz for the IC belt – harming his ‘money maker’ while doing so – and then let Wyatt cut promos treat the belt as if it was Sister Abigail, maybe even further, have him talk about how it’s the only thing that matters in WWE and now he can gain more followers and on and on. Surely, having Bray Wyatt come on the Titantron every week telling the crowd how prestigious the belt is and how much it means to him and his family would only increase the value of the belt as well which has been diminished a ridiculous amount in the last 10 years. However, doing this may take a risk as if it isn’t done properly, Bray would ultimately end up in boring feuds and would no doubt suffer the same fate as Sheamus and Miz (although they didn’t help themselves).

In more recent RAW episodes, I haven’t heard any ‘boring’ chants during Bray’s promos which would suggest that he remains to be over with the majority of the crowd and that it was just a one off but this becomes worrying as a wrestling fan. In the current WWE roster, Bray, arguably cuts the best promos and also has took part in some of the most interesting feuds in recent years with Bryan and Cena. If wrestling fans can’t get stay focused on the product enough to keep following Wyatt without being bored then other than their favorite indie guys having 5* matches every week I don’t know what more can impress them. All in all, for now, personally I feel that Bray is safe where he is and hasn’t been buried by Cena but with WWE stacking and focusing on the main event, we can only hope that he won’t get lost in the shuffle.

What do you think? Comment below with your thoughts, opinions, feedback and anything else that was raised.

– Carl Maddison

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