10 Secrets Behind WWE Magic Tricks
7. Randy Orton Setting Bray Wyatt On Fire
The pandemic allowed WWE to expand its creative palette. They settled on countless different shades of brown, since most of it was foul crap, but still. They did expand it.
The pandemic hastened the decline of Bray Wyatt’s Fiend alter-ego. It might have been untenable in and of itself, but the Strap match with Daniel Bryan at the 2020 Royal Rumble was very well-received, yielding evidence that, with the right babyface fighting from underneath, the Fiend’s near-invincible act was dramatically effective.
WWE clearly felt like they had to up the spectacle as 2020 unfolded. The alarming ratings dip indicated that the brand value didn’t much matter; there were only so many matches fans could watch in the anti-big time confines of the empty Performance Center.
In a bid to emulate something approaching a spectacle, the Fiend character was integrated into a terrible cinematic universe, after the initial brilliance of the Firefly Fun House match opposite John Cena, and effectively became a supernatural entity capable of conjuring doppelgangers and such.
To put an end to the character, in the ThunderDome, Randy set the Fiend on fire. This was accomplished using a doll and some pre-tape camera trickery.