How WWE Grew To Hate Itself
Bray Wyatt's first edition of the Firefly Fun House saw him drive a chainsaw through his old self. It was a potent and powerful visual, and just about more in keeping with kayfabe than that time the former Headbanger Mosh abandoned the Beaver Cleavage gimmick live on Raw to become plain old Chaz.
In wrestling you can't savage yourself so profoundly unless you're absolutely certain the audience already agrees. Cleavage was some stupid sh*t alright - stupid enough that even without the instant metrics available today the company were able to mercy kill it through the character there and then. Wyatt's was more of a gamble but then not really. If anything, it brought even more people in because this appeased all his original fans whilst letting others know that the company were aware of what an almighty screw up the first attempt was.
It directly translated into a major, major push for The Fiend, and naturally it went to sh*t after that. WrestleMania was another rebirth that could again be flattened now he's back in the Universal Title chase. But why was that first attempt successful enough to make non-believers look again, or old fans drop thousands on replica belts?
It wasn't just the - at times, excellent - character work. It was the catharsis of WWE admitting it sucked hard at something, and the audience closest to those failings getting the closest they'll get to an apology for it.
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