10 Wrestling Nightmares That Almost Came True
4. The Night Two Careers Nearly Died At Once
This one depends on your perspective; one man's nightmare is another man's source of perverse entertainment.
In 2017, Finn Bálor and Bray Wyatt worked a total disaster of a programme. This should have proved once and for f*cking all that supernatural storytelling doesn't work in WWE anymore, if it ever did. As part of a "heat" angle, Wyatt poured what was described as "viscous, acidic liquid" over Bálor. The implication of course is that this was blood, but WWE had long since banned blood, making the angle as pointless as it was ridiculous. And it's not as if Wyatt conjured some cloudburst from the heavens in some dumb, Brood-esque attempt at a spectacle. He literally just poured a bucket over him. Some jumped-up little sh*t having a tantrum in the garage could do that.
After some wretched PPV matches designed purely to enable more content on television, WWE revealed the endgame for the feud ahead of TLC: a new, Pumpkinhead-inspired Demon was set to take on Sister Abigail, who was Bray all along. "I will strip back my flesh to reveal the true nature of my dark song," Wyatt said on the October 2 Raw, before the sh*tty digital effect of a mouldy shawl was meant to convince people of some harrowing metamorphosis.
The match never happened - Wyatt might have tripped up on this gear, which would have surely nipped any Fiend reboot in the bud - and fans instead rejoiced at the Finn Bálor Vs. AJ Styles replacement. It was overrated, in retrospect, by the pure relief factor. A glorified mid-level BOLA match, or one of the funniest things of all time?
Surely there's no choice there.
It was, nonetheless, a nightmare scenario for those who haven't worked it out yet.