The Problem With Bray Wyatt That No One Wants To Talk About

Roughly 24 hours after Wyatt's WWE release, your writer tweeted a poll asking fans where they expected the former Fiend to show up next. Perhaps predictably, 55.7% of the 2,601 respondees chose AEW.

This is understandable. AEW is the world's second-largest promotion, has the financial clout to secure a name of Bray's size, and, crucially, offers greater creative freedom to its talents compared to WWE. The phrase "creative genius" came out a lot in the wake of Wyatt getting cut. Whatever you think of that generous appraisal, Windham Rotunda is unquestionably a man of many ideas, a lot of which made it to television, and is now perceived as somebody hamstrung by WWE's famously restrictive system.

But AEW's system doesn't suit him either.

Speaking on Talk is Jericho in February, Tony Khan admitted his regret at allowing Matt Hardy to teleport to the ring in his AEW debut, saying he should have rejected the idea. The reality-bending Broken Matt character has since been shuttered. Meanwhile, AEW announcers have stressed that the company's other supernatural adjacent character, Abadon, isn't supposed to be a zombie, but a crazy person who thinks she's a zombie. While a reanimated corpse cannot believably exist in AEW's more sport-centric universe, this portrayal fits its rules.

Even in NXT, when his character's more mysterious elements were left to the viewer's imagination rather than stated outright, Wyatt skirted the line. It's unlikely that he'd have that freedom in AEW. Bray might not be able to flex the full range of his creativity - which could lead to frustration.

Windham Rotunda and All Elite Wrestling is a poor fit. But not the worst.

CONT'd...