The Magnificent Seven: The Top 7 Most Disappointing Bray Wyatt Matches

There’s little question that Bray Wyatt is a great wrestling character. The man himself is a skilled orator and his character has elements of being a throwback, while also capitalizing on the modern wrestling landscape—compelling the “fireflies” to alight the arena when he comes to the ring and working a faster pace than such gimmick-focused wrestlers of previous generations. He’s that rare star of his generation who generates buzz, commanding attention with offbeat twists and turns in stories and unusual match types.

For everything right and compelling about Wyatt, he has only enjoyed middling success when it comes to putting on great matches or realizing all of the potential that seems intrinsic to his character. While some of it may be the responsibility of the worker beneath the gimmick, at least as much, and probably more blame goes to the bookers who have put him in a number of no-win situations. While Wyatt has delivered on occasion, including an electric series between The Wyatt Family and The Shield, and a forgotten gem of a Royal Rumble match against Daniel Bryan, more often, when the lights are on bright, Wyatt’s biggest matches tend to disappoint. This week’s column looks back at seven particularly disappointing instances. These weren’t just bad matches (though they were, for the most part, pretty bad) but ones that created high expectations going in and then let us all down.

#7. Bray Wyatt vs. Randy Orton, Payback 2017

I’m among the chorus that argues this was one of the absolute worst matches WWE has featured in years, and it’s probably the worst match on this countdown. The only thing saving it from a higher rank on the list is that expectations weren’t exactly sky high going into this match. After a stinker at WrestleMania, and given a match with no defined rules going into it, some might argue that this match—as a mostly straightforward brawl with just a few elements of hocus-pocus—exceeded their expectations.

To me, this match was emblematic of Wyatt’s problems and why so much of his highest profile work has been a disappointment. Coming on the heels of Matt Hardy’s Broken Universe and after some reasonably good wacky storytelling earlier in the Orton-Wyatt feud (I actually thought Orton burning Wyatt’s compound and the remains of Sister Abigail was kind of cool), there was reason to think this might be a unique and entertaining spectacle. Instead, we got a humorless brawl through a rundown old house, which led to the contrivances of Wyatt riding back to the arena to win the match, only for Orton to pull a mystical return and jump him there. Add onto that Jinder Mahal and his entourage getting involved, and you arrive at a convoluted mess.

#6. Bray Wyatt vs. John Cena, Extreme Rules 2014

The WrestleMania match between John Cena and Bray Wyatt narrowly missed this countdown. The downsides of that match were limited, however, to my feeling that the wrong guy had gone over, paired with a match that was just OK rather than something special.

The return match at Extreme Rules wasn’t awful in and of itself. From an in-ring perspective, however, it added next to nothing to the rivalry and its memorability. Except for the finish.

The profoundly bad finish.

While I guess you could award some points for originality, the ending that saw a demonic child sing to John Cena to stun and distract him long enough for Wyatt to win was just absurd and silly. I could see some redemption for the moment if the child became more of a recurring figure in the Wyatt entourage, but this was exactly the sort of one-off, random absurdity that has unfortunately become a pattern in Wyatt’s career. It was unsatisfying, anticlimactic and random. Oh, and Cena ended up winning the rubber match anyway.

#5. Bray Wyatt vs. Kane, SummerSlam 2013

I’d probably go so far as to call this my favorite match listed on the countdown. That doesn’t mean, however, that it wasn’t a big disappointment.

Bray Wyatt had his first PPV match in this character opposite Kane in a Ring of Fire Match—a simple enough gimmick, if an impressive spectacle as the guys wrestled in a ring that was aflame on every edge. The conceit of the match was that the fire would keep away outside interference, in particular from Wyatt’s allies Luke Harper and Erick Rowan.

The match itself was perfectly serviceable and made sense for pitting a new monster against an old one, and giving Wyatt his first big win over a credible opponent to build some momentum. It wasn’t great, though, and the finish felt especially flat for Harper and Rowan smother the flames with a blanket so they could still interfere, thus nullifying the the match concept. Worse, while it made some sense for Wyatt, the heel, to cheat, it also didn’t bode especially well for the new villain to need such pronounced help beating 2013 Kane.

#4. The Royal Rumble, 2015

While it’s tough to pin a bad Royal Rumble on Wyatt’s shoulders, and I’ll admit this is a strange fit for this countdown, I felt compelled to include for Wyatt being involved in not one but two big disappointment over the course of one of the worst Rumbles of all time.

First, Wyatt eliminated Daniel Bryan.

You’ve got to remember the context. Bryan was newly back from the injury that cut short his main event run. Fans were rabid to see him climb back to the top of the mountain. While the smart money was on Roman Reigns to win this Rumble, Bryan was the clear crowd favorite. That is, until Wyatt charged him and knocked him from the apron after he’d already gone over the top mid-match. The elimination was completely anticlimactic and completely deflated the live audience. The lackluster match would never win back the crowd.

While no one pegged or necessarily wanted Wyatt to win the Rumble, he was nonetheless one of the few men in the match with the credibility to pose some sort of threat to win. He was a fresh upper card guy and for a very anti-Reigns Philadelphia crowd, he could have been a favored underdog. But, after an iron man forty-seven minute run in the match, Wyatt got unceremoniously dumped from the ring by the heatless monster tandem of Kane and The Big Show. If there was anything worse than watching Reigns win the Rumble that year it was seeing him “triumph” against the most lumbering version of these two veterans whom no one thought for a second could win the match. If Bryan couldn’t win and WWE felt he had to go early, Wyatt should have stuck around to at least the final four, and probably the final two.

#3. Bray Wyatt vs. The Undertaker, WrestleMania 31

Questions abounded after The Undertaker’s streak came to an end at WrestleMania 30. Would he perform at WrestleMania again? Would he wrestle any more at all? The answer turned out to be yes on both counts when he was booked against Bray Wyatt for WrestleMania 31. While The Dead Man certainly had unfinished business with Brock Lesnar, no one was exactly clamoring for their rematch—least of all at WrestleMania—so facing the new dark force in WWE made as much sense as any option for The Phenom’s return.

There were highlights to this match. Wyatt’s entrance with scarecrows who lurched to life was fun, and the spot when he spider-walked to The Dead Man, only to sag when The Undertaker sat up was pretty fantastic. Unfortunately, the rest of the match was overwhelmingly flat. It wasn’t bad per se, but it also wasn’t very good and signaled the reality that we’d already seen our last great WrestleMania match out of The Undertaker.

#2. Bray Wyatt vs. Dean Ambrose, TLC 2014

In December 2014, Bray Wyatt got his first true main event opportunity. As WWE adjusted to airing PPVs on the Network and to life with Brock Lesnar as a part-time champion, it opened the door for Dean Ambrose and Bray Wyatt to close the show at the final PPV of the year.

And man did it suck.

Ambrose and Wyatt have both been known for disappointing matches when the lights are on brightest. Mind you, they’ve also both proven that they can shine when paired with the right dance partner and under the right circumstances—especially Ambrose—but at this stage in their careers it wasn’t in the cards for them to have anything better than a directionless brawl. Ambrose seemed to be trying to will an epic encounter out of the match, going for high spot after high spot—mostly elbowing Wyatt off ladders, through tables—but there was no psychology and no meaning to any of this. Worst of all, the match ended in a complete anti-climax, with Ambrose accidentally electrocuting himself with a monitor so that he fell prey to Wyatt’s pin on a fluke.

#1. Bray Wyatt vs. Randy Orton, WrestleMania 33

At WrestleMania 33, the WWE Championship match went down toward the middle of the card, and there’s little question it was the worst match on the show. There’s not much excuse for either of these outcomes, and particularly so for what could have been a crowning moment in Wyatt’s career.

Rather than putting on a solid wrestling match, or playing into some natural intrigue with Luke Harper or even Erick Rowan getting involved, these two had an incredibly mediocre match, accented by randomly projecting worms and maggots on the surface of the ring. I think WWE wanted to suggest Wyatt actually summoned these critters to the ring and it actually freaked out Orton. In practice? It was embarrassingly bad—another entry into random, directionless booking for Wyatt, in a magical performance he’d never reprise or explain.

Frankly, Wyatt deserved better. But so did the WWE Championship. AJ Styles was a revelation with the strap for most of the year leading up to WrestleMania 33 and it’s a travesty that the title went from arguably the best worker in the world to being subjected to pure farce for the biggest show of the year.

Which matches would you add to the list? My narrowest miss was Wyatt vs. Orton at Backlash 2016. Let us know what you think in the comments.

Read more from Mike Chin at his website and follow him on Twitter @miketchin.