WWE please tell him to do SOMETHING!
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If you told a group of very talented writers and creatives — who have never seen or heard of pro wrestling before — to do a “slow build,” you would get the current Bray Wyatt storyline.
Maybe it pays off huge in the long run, but when you are devoting time to it on a weekly television program, I feel like you also need to have smaller payoffs along the way.
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…Bray is on SmackDown. So he wouldn’t be mentioned on Rewind-A-Raw.
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He also hasn’t had a match yet, so there wouldn’t be any pre PPV discussion outside of his debut.
I do think there is a plan, they are trying to slow play the angle between LA Knight and Bray. Its not good, but I don’t think its lack of planning, its mediocre creative. They are trying, this isn’t Vince sabotaging something from within.
Personally I have really liked some of his promo’s, but overall I have to say I’ve been disappointed.
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I think Bray will have the same problem that he’s had every time he’s been re-packaged. Eventually, he will have to have a singles match with the lights on. And if they want him to be in the main event, some of those matches will have to be longer than just a few minutes. And Firefly Fun House aside, I think the only good Wyatt singles match I’ve seen was with Daniel Bryan… and let’s be honest, it was with Daniel Bryan.
Hope I’m wrong. If JBL could be an entertaining main eventer — despite “not being a good wrestler” literally being part of his character — then surely a mind like Bray can figure it out if given a fair shake.
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I’m not saying that the promoters are completely devoid of blame/responsibility, but they also can’t win in these situations. Sign a guy and don’t put him in marquee matches right away (the typical WWE style) and you catch crap from some fans. Sign a guy and don’t feature them on TV like AEW, and you catch crap from a different section of fans. Unless you are signing a guy to be in an immediate main eventer, somebody’s going to gripe,
Fans want to see the guys they want to see, and that’s not wrong or unreasonable of them. But the current market requires the major companies to sign more guys than they are able to feature at any given time, and there’s no perfect way to deal with that.
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Serious question. Has Bray ever delivered on the audience expectations of them character?
I feel like outside 2013/2014, he’s never really delivered much. Maybe I’m wrong.
People would always say “once Vince isn’t in charge, we will see what Bray can do”. But outside of the attempts at building viral hype for his return, has anything really lived up to his hype? (To be fair, I haven’t watched his stuff since his return and am strictly going off people’s feedback). I guess the bigger question is to that, what do fans want out if him? What could he do?
Maybe I’m wrong. But I feel like multiple times over the last decade it’s been a Bray excitement and people getting excited that “this will be the time he breaks out”… Only to be severely disappointed in the results.
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Not agreeing with the choice, but I think that’s why it’s LAK, I think they want someone who can talk, who can also be squashed and it won’t really matter. If they put say riccochet or kofi in that spot and made it a squash, fans may revolt against the match and turn on bray. He is a very hard character to book long term.
In my opinion, The Fiend absolutely delivered initially until he was hot-shotted into the worst booked WWE Title Match… ever? That killed his character dead. Hard to ret-con “what caused what” from there but, like I said a few posts up, that’s also the point where he started working regular matches, and they just didn’t deliver as far as in ring.
The problem with supernatural characters is, generally speaking, they are not allowed to sell. Even the Undertaker had only a handful of good matches before he got to point where they just said “fuck it, he’s the Undertaker” and we all just went along with it while he either sold or no sold, depending on what the situation called for. And that’s not something you can force, to date it has only come along once in a lifetime.
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I agree with this….I loved the match with Finn at Summerslam. It was the Hell in the Cell match that was the beginning of the end for him. Then you add the Goldberg job and horrible Orton/Bliss story, they killed the character. Prior to HIAC, it was awesome.
Daniel Bryan match was good as well.
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I also think The Undertaker worked much better because the first seven years of his existence, aside from PPV, you’d see him in squashes on Superstars and occasionally on RAW.
Even once RAW went two hours, he was in the main event scene - and by 97/98, he had evolved beyond Zombie-Taker. He was supernatural, but say more human. Even Ministry Taker felt far more based on reality.
The problem with Wyatt is he never had that time to be mysterious. Bray / Fiend was an every show character in marquee matches from the jump.
And that’s more or less the issue with lots of characters who would have thrived in the 80’s-90’s and why it’s very difficult to do it today.
Paul Wight was never going to be Andre because he suffered from the same situation. No major promotion could make it work. I feel Bray is the same in a lot of ways.
And as ridiculous as it sounds - the way AEW cycles people around, would probably be more beneficial a booking style for a character like Bray. (Not saying he’d do better in AEW, but the style of booking would be helpful).
Also, outside Bret, Shawn, Yoko and Nash matches - Taker spent a decade largely not being known for anything besides being an over gimmick. His matches were generally terrible outside those guys. Bray is expected to always deliver main event quality AND get a weirdo gimmick over too.
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You make a lot of good points. Having bray cycle in and out would IMO be a good thing. Granted it was like a year and a half, but look at how much that absence reinvigorated him to a crowd that didn’t care about him in the spring of 2021. This LAK feud could work if it wasn’t so drawn out. I don’t hate it, but I don’t like it either.
The other advantage taker had, was he feuded with a lot of people on their way out, or who were only there short term. Giant Gonzalez, king king Bundy etc. problem with bray, is if you give a top guy (ie. Rollins, Lashley, Lesnar, reigns etc.) you risk either making bray look dumb like he did with Goldberg, or risk hurting the star (look how bad it fucked up rollins babyface run of 2019). Mid card heels with little upside probably is the way to go, but that presents its own set of challenges like we’re talking about here.
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In fairness, I also think we should give bray a little bit of slack for the past few weeks, guys gone through some shitty family stuff with his uncle, so I think it’s understandable if he’s not giving 100% to the creative lately.