Former WWE creative team member Andrew Goldstein recently published a blog talking about his growing fondness of the Bray Wyatt character in WWE. Below is an excerpt:
“I wasn’t sold right out of the gate on the Wyatt Family. Their introductory vignettes looked cool enough – almost like they were emanating from the Yellow King’s summer home long before HBO introduced us to “True Detective” – but I had once before seen a team of young upstarts light developmental on fire in 2006 prompting management to spend thousands on slick, cinematic vignettes only for the team to show up on TV with an out-of-date, hokey presentation destining them for mid-card comedy act (I’ll give you a hint: Their name rhymed and was mildly racist. Answer at the bottom of the paragraph) So, needless to say I was skeptical especially after nothing the Wyatt’s did for their first six months on TV had any impact whatsoever. Sure they took out Kane, but we never got a reason why – at least not one that I cold decipher thru all of Bray’s nonsensical Riddler-speak and back woods jargon.”
“None of it meant anything to me – not their creepy ring entrance, the abrupt crashes to break, not even their glorious beards could seduce me into caring much at all. I even initially hated Bray’s “Sister Abigail” finish. To me it was too much of a “wrestling” move for someone who was supposed to be a depraved sociopath from the wrong side of the “Deliverance” porch. (I thought something like the Heart Punch better suited the gimmick) But then the show-stealing Royal Rumble match with Daniel Bryan happened and then two weeks later on RAW he hit that now-famous running “Sister Abigail” on Rey Mysterio and the whole Bray Wyatt thing started to click for me.”
“He wasn’t just some over-wrought product of the WWE creative machine with a cool ring entrance but ultimately destined for the same shipping crate that sent the Spirit Squad packing. No, no, no… to borrow a phrase from @JRsBBQ, there was steak behind his sizzle, so much so in fact, that I finally realized just what the hell Bray Wyatt was doing that was so special: He was single-handedly bringing back a tried and true, make and model of a professional wrestler – long left for dead – from the brink of extinction.”
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