On July 8, 2013, The Wyatt Family made their debut on Monday Night Raw. After weeks after perfectly done vignettes, Wyatt and company finally appeared, absolutely destroying Kane in what was easily one of the best main roster debuts in recent memory.
Although fans had seen them in NXT (with Harper & Rowan even winning the NXT Tag Team Championship), there was an air of mystery when it came to the stable. Fans didn’t really know what to expect, Wyatt had a way of captivating audiences, and perhaps more than anything, it was something fresh in a company that was full of stale characters.
Within months, Wyatt was already near the top of the card, entering into a lengthy feud with Daniel Bryan that saw The Wyatt Family establish themselves as undisputed future stars in the the company. Say what you will about the Bryan/Wyatt program (especially regarding Bryan briefly joining Wyatt), but it is hard to deny that he was completely over with the fans, he put on great matches (particularly his match with Bryan at the 2014 Royal Rumble), and he felt important. In short, he was one of the only superstars in the company that fans didn’t want to miss on a weekly basis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23tVe5PiZq0
Fast-forward a year from Wyatt’s epic match with Bryan at the Royal Rumble. The Wyatt Family had recently disbanded, Wyatt himself had just finished a program with Dean Ambrose that was more about shenanigans and trying to fill a void left by an absent WWE World Heavyweight Champion than building either superstar toward something bigger, and all three members of the Wyatt Family were worse off than they were a year prior.
After a relatively uneventful performance in the 2015 Royal Rumble and sitting out Fastlane, Wyatt had a shot at redemption at on the Grandest Stage of Them All by calling out The Undertaker. Leading up to WrestleMania, fans did not see The Undertaker once. Instead, the burden of getting the match over was placed solely on the shoulders of Wyatt.
He did an admirable job, as most can barely get a program over when they have a willing participant on hand to engage with, let alone coming out on a weekly basis and cutting promos when fans know there is no chance of seeing his opponent before the pay-per-view.
It seemed as if they were setting up a “passing of the torch” type of situation. The Undertaker – the man who had relied upon mind games and the supernatural to intimate his opponents for years – was squaring off against Bray Wyatt – a man who has used similar tactics in the past. Wyatt began referring to himself as the “New Face of Fear” leading up to the event, setting up a perfect situation for Wyatt to destroy the hero of old and establish himself as the next generation’s monster heel.
That of course did not happen, and Wyatt has been basically absent from television since, aside from cutting promos where he has still been referring to himself as the “New Face of Fear,” despite the fact that he lost clean to the old face of fear just a few weeks prior.
This begs the question: Where does Wyatt go from here? His character has not really evolved at all since his debut, he lost his stable mates and is now flying solo, and he hasn’t had anything even vaguely resembling a title shot since debuting on the roster. One could argue that he is the type of character who does not need a title to make an impact, but it could also easily be argued that the aforementioned belief is bogus.
Something needs to be done to legitimize Wyatt, because right now he is completely lost in the shuffle. The company clearly has no idea what to do with him, the one chance they had to put him over as the next big heel in the company was botched to put over a 50-year-old superstar who shows up once a year to collect a paycheck, and he has been cutting essentially the same backstage promo on a weekly for several months. The company has a potential goldmine in the form of Wyatt, but they are simply sitting there with a giant thumb up their you know what while they figure out how to mine it.
How do you feel about Bray Wyatt? What needs to be done to establish him as one of the top stars in the company? Discuss the situation in the comments section.
