Category Archives: Sports

Unlucky 7: The Most Notable Times WWE Failed Bray Wyatt

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Bray Wyatt (real name Windham Rotunda) was recently released from his WWE contract. This sort of thing happens all the time in the pro wrestling business, but not typically to a performer who holds the spot on the roster that Rotunda holds. Whether cheering or booing, the fan at-large never stopped responding to Rotunda. And, by all accounts, he sells a lot of merchandise, and makes WWE a lot of money.

This would lead one to believe that his release was due to less typical circumstances. One such circumstance is that Rotunda has always brought creative ideas to the table that are both complex, yet still clearly-executed. Vince McMahon has never been one to push a complex idea, and the only clear ones he cares about are his own. For the time-being, I’m going to theorize that Rotunda and WWE parted due to the ever-popular reason of creative differences.

But, the bigger question, is how did we get here? Rotunda has been over with the fans since his main roster debut back in 2013. For the most part, the audiences engagement with him never really faltered. Along with his creative storytelling, he is a very good in-ring performer with a strong, signature move set, and even stronger in-ring psychology. With that package, Rotunda should have have a decades-long run at, or near, the top of the card. The problem is that, no matter how great a package you present, McMahon needs to push that package the right way.

Frankly, Rotunda’s success seemed to come more in-spite of Vince McMahon than anything else. If you take a look back at the points in Rotunda’s WWE career when he was on the cusp of becoming a true main event superstar, you can can see a very clear pattern of Vince McMahon’s booking undercutting Rotunda’s momentum. The list I’m presenting below will certainly not tell the whole story, but I believe that it offers the highlights (lowlights?) of the problem. The list has been sorted in chronological order.

Bray Wyatt vs John Cena – WrestleMania 30 – April 2014 – The Wyatt Family, a cult-ish, backwoods crew who gained notoriety in the burgeoning NXT made their main roster debut in 2013 after that year’s WrestleMania. The fans were immediately interested in the Wyatt Family, and that was almost entirely due to Wyatt’s ability to spin a great promo, and perform like a badass in the ring. This was Bray Wyatt’s WrestleMania debut match. And it was against the man who had been at the top of the company for nearly a decade, but had one foot out the door and pointed toward Hollywood. A win here would have given Wyatt a massive rub, and set a new star rocketing toward a main event spot. Instead, Cena was booked to overcome Wyatt, and his Wyatt Family, as Cena had been booked to do to virtually every other previous challenge. The result here presented Wyatt himself as just another one of those challenges, thus sullying his credibility right out of the gate.

Bray Wyatt vs The Undertaker – WrestleMania 31 – March 2015 – Prior to what is popularly referred to as “WrestleMania Season” Wyatt has started calling himself “The New Face Of Fear” as a direct shot at the old face of fear. It seemed like a good angle, since that face was only showing itself on WWE programming two or three times per year by this point. The Undertaker’s legendary streak ended the year before in a loss of Brock Lesnar, and he was several years into the phase of his career where he really only had matches at WrestleMania to defend said streak. With the streak over, WWE was presented with a great opportunity to pass the baton, and give Wyatt the sort of win that could define his young career. With the streak over, the only real thing Undertaker had left to offer was his own career. A match between Taker and Wyatt at WrestleMania, where Wyatt could both retire the legend, and officially claim his New Face Of Fear mantle would have set Wyatt off on the path to great things. Instead, Taker wins, even though he was an aging part-timer who was no longer even defending a historic win streak.

The Wyatt Family Getting Clowned By The Rock & John Cena – WrestleMania 32 – April 2016 – You may notice a pattern forming here, but I promise there will be a few non-WrestleMania examples coming up soon. Though, the fact that there are so many examples of his at Mania makes the problem very clear. This was not even a match, other than The Rock beating Erik Rowan in an impromptu match that lasted all of seven seconds. The Rock was retired and, frankly, could have laid the smackdown on any undercard talent here while getting the same pop fro the crowd. Instead, they brought out the semi-retired John Cena, and the pair bounced Bray Wyatt, and his cohorts, around the ring for a few minutes. Hardly the best use of Bray Wyatt, and certainly not helpful to his credibility after losing matches in the two previous Manias.

Bray Wyatt vs Randy Orton – WWE Championship Match – WrestleMania 33 – April 2017 – The match itself ended up being overbooked, and undercooked at the same time with silly moments provided by the WWE AV Club. Wyatt lost the match, and the title, after a single RKO in an era where no one stays down after one finishing move in big title matches. The bigger travesty in this case, was that they were so close to finally doing right by Wyatt.
Just two months prior, Wyatt outlasted John Cena, AJ Styles, Dean Ambrose, The Miz, and Baron Corbin in an Elimination Chamber match that concluded with Wyatt, himself, pinning both Styles and Cena. Wyatt was still nominally a heel, but the crowd showered him with a “You Deserve It!” chant that clearly had its origins in the many previous mishandlings of Wyatt’s booking.
On top of this, Wyatt had been involved in a months-long program where Randy Orton joined the Wyatt Family, despite Luke Harper’s (portrayed by the late Jon Huber) suspicions about Orton’s true motives. Wyatt sided with Harper over Orton, only to be betrayed by Orton just as Harper had expected. The stage was set for an epic Triple Threat Match between Wyatt, Orton, and Harper for the WWE Championship at WrestleMania.
Instead, McMahon had Harper booked out of the angle a few weeks before Mania, and then booked a terrible gimmick match that was won by Orton, who was already a multi-time world champion, and did not need this win nearly as much as Wyatt did. A few months later, Orton dropped the title to Jinder Mahal, who went on to have an extremely forgettable title reign himself, and Wyatt had to get back to the drawing board to build himself up again.

“The Fiend” Bray Wyatt vs Seth Rollins – WWE Universal Title Match – Hell In The Cell – October 2019 – See? I told you we’d have some non-Mania examples coming up. Wyatt floated around the mid-card, and tag team division for a little while, before re-inventing himself with one of the most staggered character transformations in the history of pro wrestling. Leaving the cult leader persona behind, Wyatt became a creepy children’s show host who sometimes transformed into a horror movie-style monster called The Fiend. Again, he was working heel, but the fan were super into this new presentation. Only a few months after The Fiend’s in-ring debut at SummerSlam, he was given a Universal Title shot at the Hell In The Cell event.
One couldn’t imagine a more perfect scenario for the monstrous Fiend to claim his spot at the top. October. Halloween season. Hell In The Cell match. The Fiend took all of Rollins’ best shots, and kept coming after him. Until the end, when Rolling piled a bunch of steel chairs atop The Fiend, and then beat those chairs with a sledgehammer. No pinfall, no submission, a HitC match has no rules. But the referee stopped the match. Rollins retained, The Fiend attacked him after the match, and the crowd hated it all. This ending hurt Rollins as much as it did Wyatt to the extent that Rollins – who was running at an all-time high popularity – had to turn heel shortly afterward.
A few weeks later, at one of WWE’s ill-advised cash grab Crown Jewel Saudi Arabia shows, The Fiend did take the title off Rollins. But having the title change happen at such a controversial show, rather than in the perfectly-themed Hell In The Cell was another in the long line of booking mistakes for Wyatt.

“The Fiend” Bray Wyatt vs Goldberg – WWE Universal Title Match – Crown Jewel – February 2020 – Speaking of the morally-problematic Saudi Arabia shows, The Fiend dropped the Universal Title at the very next one to 50-something year-old Goldberg, who happened to show up a few weeks earlier and demand a title match.
If there’s one thing Vince McMahon loves doing, it’s feeding his current stars to relics of past eras (see the first three entries on this list). Goldberg speared and jackhammered The Fiend a few times, and then pinned him to take the title in less than five minutes. The Fiend stood up afterward, and dusted himself off like it was no big thing. But he’d already lost the match, and the title, so the damage was done.
Goldberg dropped the belt to former Wyatt Family heavy Braun Strowman two months later at WrestleMania 36, while Wyatt actually had his WrestleMania highlight in a Firefly Fun House match against John Cena. This Wyatt-Cena match was a lot more fun than their previous Mania encounters as both Wyatt and Cena were committed to making something really self-referential and interesting.
Wyatt himself won his second Universal Title from Strowman at that year’s SummerSlam, but then lost it in a Triple Threat Match to Roman Reigns only one week later at the Payback event. Honestly, that could warrant its own entry on this list, but I’m trying to keep it to seven.

“The Fiend” Bray Wyatt vs Randy Orton – WrestleMania 37 – April 2021 – And, just like that, we’re back at WrestleMania, and we’re back with Randy Orton. It makes sense that this would be the final nail in the coffin of Wyatt’s WWE career, as McMahon had used Orton and Mania to kill Wyatt’s credibility at his previous career peak four-years prior. This time around, Wyatt and Orton had a much less interesting story. Orton set The Fiend on fire in the ring some months earlier, so Wyatt’s new acolyte Alexa Bliss became a thorn in Orton’s side, until The Fiend returned to lay out Orton, and make their WrestleMania match official.
With fans in the arena for the first time in over year, due to the Covid pandemic, and chanting for The Fiend, McMahon again books Wyatt to be pinned by Orton after a single RKO. Sure, The Fiend was confused by Alexa Bliss’ make-up or some such thing, but this was still terrible booking, and the crowd let them know it.
Wyatt would make one more brief appearance on the following night’s episode of RAW, before disappearing for several months until his release was announced.

So, what’s next? No on can tell for sure, but Rotunda is a highly imaginative person, and I would certainly be willing to check out whatever he does next – be it wrestling, writing, or filmmaking. My personal preference, though, would be to see him show up in AEW. The rival promotion has been putting on a better wrestling product than WWE in every way pretty much since its premiere, and it certainly seems to be a place where where more creative minds can thrive as well.

AEW has a growing list of performers that Vince McMahon couldn’t (or wouldn’t) figure out how to use properly, that they have presented like the superstars they always seemed like they could be. Cody Rhodes, Jon Moxley, Miro The Redeemer, Andrade, and Malakai Black, just to name a few. With word that former WWE super-duper-main-even-stars CM Punk and Daniel Bryan (Bryan Danielson) are set to debut in AEW over the next few weeks, acquiring Rotunda on top of that would elevate AEW to a whole other level of relevancy amongst even the most jaded pro wrestling fans.

It’s exciting to look forward to whatever Windham Rotunda does next. But, looking back, it’s also pretty easy to see where things went wrong with WWE. Vince McMahon likely won’t learn any lessons from this, and one of the lessons Rotunda probably learned was that Vince never learns his lessons. Hopefully, whatever else Rotunda learned, will serve him well in what he decided to do next.

Roman Reigns vs Dean Ambrose A.K.A. Vince vs The WWE Universe

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If you’ve clicked to read this blog then you already have some sort of interest in the current WWE product, and so you don’t really need an elaborate introduction into their current quagmire.

So, the short version, Vince McMahon is thrusting his choice for top guy Roman Reigns at the WWE Universe despite how hard the universe resists. Meanwhile, Dean Ambrose has gotten himself way over in a very organic fashion and is clearly the WWE Universe’s choice for the next top guy.

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Here are the most pertinent factoids about Dean Ambrose: he lacks the in-ring skills of a CM Punk, a Daniel Bryan or a Seth Rollins, but he can hold his own with his take-a-beating-but-keep-on-fighting ring psychology. What he does have is Punk’s anti-authoritarian charisma and Daniel Bryan’s “never give up even when his opponent is clearly physically superior to him” attitude. He also clearly has the WWE fans’ support in a way that Roman Reigns probably never will.

Roman Reigns is fine in the ring, he sells well, and his offense looks like it it might actually do some damage to his opponent. But his mic skills are underdeveloped and he lacks any genuine natural charisma to lure in fans with his presence alone.

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Another major knock on Reigns is the way he’s been booked, which is not his fault in any way. Popular opinion is that they tried to get the WWE Championship on him too soon. He has never worked the mid-card, or won a mid-card title, and his lack of true rivalries has cut off his chance to develop as a character.  While some of this is true, the truth is that they’ve waited too long to make him WWE Champ.

Money In The Bank 2014 was when he should have become WWE Champion. He was coming off a fantastic Royal Rumble match, and the Shield has just wrapped a great program against Evolution. The fans were completely in Reigns’ corner and he was white hot at the time. The crowd was also ready for something new – as illustrated by Daniel Bryan’s rise to the top – and so they would have been fully behind Reigns winning that ladder match and becoming champion.

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Instead, WWE decided to go back to John Cena for the umpteenth time. Sure Cena served as little more than a transitional champion to Brock Lesnar, but Lesnar never needed to be champion to have heat with the crowd. He could have run through Cena, and some other top guys en route to a collision with Reigns for the title at last year’s WrestleMania. Sure, Lesnar may have had the fans cheering him over Reigns by that point, but it was a risk worth taking.

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Instead all these stops and starts with the title have only hurt Reigns’ credibility with the fans. Couple that with the fact that he keeps being given opportunity after opportunity on top of already being shoved down the WWE Universe’s throat by Vince McMahon, and now you’ve got a big problem: The WWE Universe is already ready to move on from Roman Reigns.

Ambrose faces a similar, if not worse, credibility issue at this juncture. He has been in several high profile feuds against the likes of Seth Rollins and Bray Wyatt, and has lost all of them. An Intercontinental championship feud with Kevin Owens was fun, but did not elevate him like winning out in either of those other programs would have.

Still, the fans pop for him louder than for any other full-time act. But, if WWE is not careful, they might end up with Dolph Ziggler 2.0: a guy who is super over for a while until the fans realize that he’s never going to be allowed to really win the BIG one and so they lose interest in him.

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People in the business like to say that wins and loses don’t matter in professional wrestling, but that’s simply not true. Wins are the currency for the fans that help them decide who to invest their energy into supporting.

Heels who get big wins are proven to be true threats to any who cross their path. On the flip side of that token, the babyfaces who then beat those dangerous heels feed into their fans’ belief that their guy really can make it all the way to the top.

When the right guy wins the right match, it’s an exuberantly cathartic experience for thousands or even millions of viewers (see: CM Punk at MITB 2012 or Daniel Bryan at WrestleMania XXX).

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At WrestleMania this year Roman Reigns will beat Triple H for the WWE Championship. That’s a close to a certainty as you’ll get in professional wrestling. The problem here is that, because his Vince-mandated crowning was so long delayed, he’s already beaten every heel on the roster and even some of the top babyfaces.

Sure, there’s a Brock Lesnar match in there, but that’s about it as far as intriguing match-ups go. The best bet here, and honestly for Reigns’ future in general, is to turn him heel. It’s a more natural fit for him, it will offer fresh matches, and it might finally give him a chance to have some fun and develop more of a character.

Speaking of Brock Lesnar, the people really want to see Dean Ambrose beat Lesnar in a no holds barred street fight at WrestleMania, but don’t really think he’ll be able to. In pro wrestling, that is the exact set up you want in this situation. If Ambrose does somehow beat Lesnar, then it will be the biggest win of his career, and he will become a bona fide main event draw by becoming the first man in more than three years to pin Lesnar in the middle of the ring.

Allow me to fantasy book for a moment here. If I were running the WWE I’d have Ambrose pull the shocker of the century and beat Triple H for the WWE Championship at Roadblock on March 12th. The main event of WrestleMania on April 3rd then combines the two big matches currently booked into a no disqualification, no count out Fatal 4Way match of the Champion Ambrose vs Lesnar vs Reigns vs Triple H. Yes, you’d have one less big ticket match on the show, but this match would drive the 90,000 people in the audience into an absolute frenzy.

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The result here is Ambrose pinning Lesnar, followed by Reigns making an entrance during an Ambrose celebratory promo the next night on Raw, and nailing him with a spear to ferocious jeers from the crowd. Then we’ve got the most popular babyface as champ, Reigns in the monster heel position he belongs in, and a nice championship feud to kick off Ambrose’s title reign.

What is far more likely to happen is Ambrose loses to Triple H due due a distraction by Brock Lesnar at Roadblock. This would be followed by Reigns beating Triple H at Mania and Ambrose putting up a helluva fight against Lesnar but ultimately losing. Raw kicks off the expected Reigns-Lesnar feud, and hopefully they find something worthwhile for Ambrose to do.

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The great thing about professional wrestling is that storylines and plans can change direction at a moment’s notice. Of course, that’s also the frustrating thing when the powers-that-be refuse to change things that are clearly not working.

I’ll keep watching, regardless, as I always have appreciated the art of the performance. And, as deluded as it may be, I will always keep hoping that WWE actually listens to its fans and gives them what the really want.

Deflating The Gate, Once And For All

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With the story about the New England Patriots having under-inflated footballs for one game finally, mercifully appearing to die, and the Patriots taking on the Indianapolis Colts (who started the whole mess in the first place)  tonight, I decided to offer my final thoughts on the issue.

Two things to get out of the way up front. First, the nickname for the story is beyond stupid and will not be justified by way of writing it here. People are aware that the Richard Nixon Watergate Scandal was names as such because Watergate was the name of the hotel it occurred in, right?

Second, Tom Brady swore under oath that he did not give any kind of instructions to under-inflate the game balls, so if he’s lying that could lead to a prison sentence for perjury. You’d have to be an idiot to think that a millionaire with a seemingly idyllic family life, no history of criminal activity, and four SuperBowl championship rings would risk going to jail just to avoid being suspended for four regular season football games.

The part that really pisses me off about the way this whole story blew up is that real crimes committed by NFL players are forgotten by the public at large a month or two after they end, because the NFL wants these stories to go away as quickly as possible. Greg Hardy beats the hell out of his girlfriend, Michael Vick murders dogs for profit and pleasure,  and Ray Rice is caught on camera knocking out his fiance and dragging her unconscious body out of the elevator like a cave man. These are genuinely  horrifying actions perpetrated by employees of the NFL that, quite frankly put, should have led to these men being banned from the NFL for life and some sort of appropriate prison sentence.

However, since neither of those things happened, Commissioner Roger Goodell would like to direct your attention elsewhere as soon as humanly possible. “Here’s something that’s technically against the rules,” he’s saying “But nobody actually got hurt or worse, so let’s all watch how I deal with it.” And then he blew it anyway by overplaying his hand.

“Seems like someone tinkered with game day equipment, so here’s a fine,” should have been the resolution. He got the fine, but then his impotency complex over not properly dealing with the real scumbags led him to push things way too far.

There have been so many Performance Enhancement Drug suspensions DUI’s, and other crimes that I stopped trying to keep track years ago. Why the NFL would allow violent criminals and drunk drivers to ever have another chance to make millions of dollars representing the NFL on national TV every week, but choose to go after one of their model employees, is beyond me.

Bottom line, the amount of air in footballs should be decided by each team individually. This is not like P.E.D’s, which are actually illegal for recreational use and create long term medical problems for users. With P.E.D use, the issue is that it leads to clean players saying: “If these guys are getting an advantage by pumping steroids into their bodies, therefore risking their future health, then I need to as well in order to keep up. How is that fair?” Which is a fair assessment, because it’s not fair at all. Which is why P.E.D use carries a justified fine and a suspension.

You know what carries no medical drawbacks whatsoever? Air. There is absolutely no reason why teams shouldn’t be allowed to decide how much air is pumped into their footballs. This quarterback is more comfortable with more air, that QB is more comfortable with less air. Okay, let’s just have them do that then.

Again, we’re talking about their own team’s footballs – they are not touching the other team’s footballs. In soccer and basketball, both teams use the same ball, so it’s understandable why there would be such regulations. Every football team brings its own bag of balls to every game, with the other team rarely touching those balls. So it’s pointless to say this amount of air is okay, that amount of air is not. I’ll even go far enough to predict that in two or three years this rule will be changed, or eliminated altogether.

So, let’s lay this story to rest the way that Tom Brady and The Patriots have been laying their opponents to rest so far this year (under unnecessarily intense scrutiny, I might add). R.I.P to the under-inflated footballs during one single game story, and I look forward to be proven a prophet when this moronic and pointless rule is killed in the near future.

How Can You Watch The NFL?

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With football season upon us, I was recently asked “Why do you watch football? What do you get out of it?”

My immediate response was something akin to “Same reason I watch anything on TV: because I enjoy it.”

But the question did get me thinking more about it. I can give you actual reasons why I like the TV shows or movies I like. Be it characters, action, storyline twists, etc. So I started trying to narrow down the reasons why I enjoy watching football. Then I narrowed it down further, since I don’t really care about college football, to why do I watch the NFL.

Oddly enough, the first thing I thought of was “How can I watch the NFL?  Especially when taking the league as a whole.”

The NFL is an organization that celebrates violence, and glorifies the men who are best at inflicting it. This mindset has led to an ongoing concussion issue carrying over from the days when there weren’t many rules other than Touchdowns = 6 points. The NFL has thrown some money at this issue, a lot by most standards, but not nearly enough to help all of the players who are suffering from brain injuries sustained in their playing days.

Even more disturbing is how the culture of violence that has permeated the lives of current players, and how the NFL has dealt with it. Mike Vick, Ray Rice, Greg Hardy, Rae Carruth, and Lawrence Phillips and Aaron Hernandez are the few (of many) examples that I can think of off the top of my head.

Vick walked out of prison and into another hundred million dollar contract. LOTS of THINGS I’d like to see happen to anyone involved in dog fighting, but getting a massive contract to play in the NFL is not among them. Rice got suspended for two games, TWO games, for knocking out his girlfriend and then dragging her limp body out of an elevator. Only when the actual video tape was made public did Commission Roger Goodell issue something even approaching an appropriate ruling.

Greg Hardy also beat on his girlfriend, and then threw her onto a bed full of guns. He got suspended for ten games, which is better than two games, but then that got knocked down to just four games. Carruth is a convicted murderer, Phillips is serving a few decades for assault and attempted murder, and Hernandez likely won’t be playing football anywhere but a prison yard for the rest of his life.

The truth is that any NFL player involved in violent crimes off the field should be banned from ever again putting on an NFL uniform. But that won’t happen, because these players are multi-millionaires and the NFL is a multi-billion dollar enterprise. In fact, many of the perpetrators never get convicted because they are subject to the same impotent rules of the U.S. Justice System as anyone with enough fame and/or money. But the NFL is not a branch of the U.S. government so, whether or not these player actually serve time in prison, they league could still ban them for life.

They never will, though. And so I can’t justify how I watch the NFL on a moral or ethical level. But those were never really the reasons I enjoy watching football anyway. It doesn’t seem appropriate to get into those reasons here, so I’ll get into them in my next blog post.