Bray Wyatt has been through a lot of ups and downs over the course of his career. He has been pushed as a main event star, he has been buried over and over, and has won huge matches only for them to lead to nothing.
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But somehow, Wyatt has persevered, wowing audiences with his great mic and character work. WWE repeatedly failing him has led to the birth of the Firefly Fun House and The Fiend, inarguably the greatest creation of the last decade at least.
Wyatt's status as a mystical, supernatural character means that WWE often leans into fantasy elements with his gimmick as well, and there have been several occasions where his career just hasn't made any sense.
10 His Terrible First Main Roster Match As The Cult Leader
After a few weeks of airing vignettes, hyping the debut of The Wyatt Family, they made their first appearance on the red brand by taking out Kane. In the weeks that followed, they took out several stars before turning their attention to The Devil's Favorite Demon once more.
This led to an Inferno match at SummerSlam, which Wyatt won with some help. The question is, why did WWE book this match? Kane was way over the hill as a performer, the gimmick would just limit what the performers could do, and it led to a boring, terrible match that Wyatt couldn't even win without outside interference. It was the worst way to introduce him to the main roster.
9 The Loss To Cena At WrestleMania XXX
After a great match against Daniel Bryan at the Royal Rumble in 2014, Bray Wyatt set his sights on John Cena. This led to some great segments, with Wyatt tormenting Cena, threatening to take away his prized young fans.
They then met at WrestleMania XXX, where Wyatt lost in pathetic fashion. In the weeks that followed, Wyatt lost the feud altogether and his character never recovered. What was the point of sending Wyatt after Cena if the promotion had no intention of actually giving him the big win? All it did was delegitimize Wyatt and ensure that no one in WWE saw him as a true main event star.
8 Setting Harper & Rowan Free
Soon after The Shield broke up, WWE started airing vignettes where Wyatt was shown setting Rowan and Harper free. While the members of The Shield were all set up for great runs after the breakup, WWE broke up The Wyatt Family almost as an afterthought.
Wyatt had no momentum coming out of the breakup, nor did Harper or Rowan. WWE wasted a ton of storytelling opportunities with The Wyatt Family going their separate ways, instead choosing the lazy route that did nothing for any of the people involved. The Wyatt Family breaking up should have been a huge deal but was treated as anything but that.
7 Ridiculously Short WWE Championship Reign
At Elimination Chamber in 2017, Bray Wyatt put in the performance of a lifetime, winning the WWE Championship for the first time in his career. It should have been a star-making performance for the Cult Leader, but it turned out to be a nightmare.
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He entered a feud with Randy Orton for the gold, which led to a match at WrestleMania 33. The match was absolutely horrible and to make matters even worse, Wyatt dropped the championship. It was a completely mindboggling decision; it made absolutely no sense to put the gold on a rising young star, only to give him a short reign, ending in a truly pathetic match.
6 The Abstract Promos
Bray Wyatt is a master on the mic, he has repeatedly proven that on countless occasions in the past. When he first debuted, he was scary, intimidating, yet oddly charming in his promos. He was nothing short of phenomenal.
But as time went on, with Wyatt failing to win one feud after another, his promos also began being increasingly abstract. Over time, they stopped making sense altogether, reaching a point where Wyatt was forced to essentially spout incomprehensible gibberish in the hopes of distracting fans from his truly terrible booking.
5 Failed Face Run With Matt Hardy
After losing a feud to Finn Balor, Bray Wyatt turned his attention to Matt Hardy. After beating Hardy in a match, his "Woken" persona emerged. This led to an Ultimate Deletion match, with Wyatt being pushed into the Lake of Reincarnation.
Wyatt eventually emerged as a face, teaming up with Matt Hardy. They even won the Raw Tag Team Championships, only to drop the gold to the B-Team in their first championship defense. Hardy then took some time off to heal up and their team disbanded. Instead of trying to get Wyatt over as a solo act, he was pulled from programming altogether, with no real reasoning.
4 The Red Lighting In Matches
The Fiend made an awesome debut against Finn Balor at SummerSlam, destroying the inaugural Universal Champion enroute to victory. In the matches that followed, WWE inexplicably started bathing his matches in disgusting red lighting.
Not only did it give people a headache, it also made it much harder to see what was going on in the ring. The red lighting debuted in his extremely controversial match with Seth Rollins inside Hell in a Cell and WWE stuck with it in the months that followed. Thankfully, someone with common sense pushed to have it removed, so fans could actually see what was happening in the ring.
3 Bray Should Have Known Better Not To Trust A Viper
While The Wyatt Family was together, they actually managed to recruit two wrestlers; Daniel Bryan and Randy Orton. The first was pretty short-lived as Bryan quickly broke away from the rest of the clan, leading to a feud between both men. Wyatt should have been warier of new inductees now, right? He's simply too smart to fall for the same shtick again, right?
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Well, no. Wyatt then recruited Randy Orton to the family, who predictably turned on him as well. To make matters worse, The Viper even took away his WWE Championship. The fact that the supposedly smart, cunning, manipulative Wyatt would fall for the same trick twice defies all logic.
2 Where Is John Cena?
16-time world champion John Cena drew the ire of The Fiend heading into WrestleMania 36, as the monster sought to avenge what Cena had done to Wyatt six years ago. This led to a Firefly Fun House match, which was a wild, surreal, shocking experience, as fans were taken down the rabbit hole of Wyatt's twisted mind.
In the final sequence, The Fiend emerged to defeat Cena, and then the match just ended. Where is Cena? Is he still trapped in the Fun House, losing his grasp on reality? Or did Wyatt let him out after beating him? How did Cena get into the Fun House in the first place? As awesome as the match was, it didn't make a lot of sense.
1 Getting Squashed By Goldberg
Not only was Goldberg squashing The Fiend absolutely the wrong call, it led to the character's worst match as well. Even if fans cast that aside for a moment, the fact that this match took place in the first place makes absolutely no sense.
Wyatt had established that The Fiend emerges to avenge those who had wronged him in the first place, so just why was The Fiend going up against Goldberg? The men have no shared history, so it made no sense for the monster to emerge. Sure, Wyatt managed to explain his loss away, but still, it made no sense whatsoever.
NEXT: 5 Things Bray Wyatt Does Better Than Braun Strowman (& 5 Things Braun Is Best At)
