10 Times WrestleMania Genuinely Surprised Us
4. The Firefly Funhouse Match
When WWE announced cinematic matches for the empty arena WrestleMania 36, the Boneyard bout between AJ Styles and The Undertaker was about what was expected: two superstars tumbling around a fun area with plenty of smoke and mirrors. Good stuff, for sure, but nothing too shocking.
Night 2’s Firefly Funhouse match, though? Well, if you say you were expecting this, you’re a liar. Even by Bray Wyatt’s standards this was out there; but while some of his high concepts fall flat in execution, this one was just perfect.
Advertised as a match between Wyatt and John Cena, it was instead a deep dive into the latter’s psyche, both as a wrestling persona and an actual man. In a series of bizarre, often abstract skits, Wyatt skewered Cena’s shaky early days. propensity for burying talent, unwillingness to go heel, and even his relationship with Nikki Bella. The result is an incredible pro-wrestling artefact, a short film worth pouring over to find every detail and reference.
Titus O’Neil’s baffled face when the audience return to the performance centre says it all. The match (“match”) was divisive, as anything genuinely original tends to be, but as an act of wrestling character study, it’s untouchable.