Why WWE Can’t Afford To Screw Up Sister Abigail
A curiously mismatched and misjudged series with CM Punk and Daniel Bryan followed, the excitement surrounding which was virtually nil, given that it represented an infuriating and senseless demotion for the latter. All was not yet lost; Wyatt’s match opposite Bryan, at Royal Rumble 2014, was so astonishingly good that it was not engulfed by the furore surrounding his opponent. The match, for once, was the story. Wyatt, it seemed, was impervious to inconsistent and distrustful booking. The believability of the performance elevated the character above the dross. Perhaps that is why, despite the systematic disaster to come, fans still held their mobile phones aloft in support of the Eater of Worlds. There was untapped potential within him.
His next programme, opposite John Cena, was damaging - even in spite of the awesome would-be rescue act that was their blinding, climactic Last Man Standing match at Payback. The narrative - Wyatt was intent on unleashing the monster within the Ace - was at once derivative and problematic. Suspension of disbelief was impossible; by 2014, the elusive Cena heel turn was just that. Nobody believed it would happen two years prior, when Kane needed something to do. Even fewer believed Wyatt had any chance. Their WrestleMania XXX bout was histrionic and on-the-nose. Their Steel Cage Extreme Rules sequel was, in a word, laughable, though there was nothing particularly funny about watching SuperCena overcome the combined might of three supernatural entities with ease.
Cena overcame the monster within, and therein lay the problem. Wyatt underwent Flanderised character development from wager of psychological warfare to actual, powered-up phantasm. He could control man-made lighting sources with his mind. He could teleport. He could summon apparitions. He could force spooky little children to do his bidding. And yet, he could not win major wrestling matches, undermining his entire act. He could not use his storyline advantages to his advantage. How terrible a wrestler must he have been to lose, ritually, against mere mortals?
Ritually is the word; Wyatt lost to everybody who mattered in the months and years to come. His ‘New Face of Fear’ bit promised a full character reset, but a big stage loss to spiritual antecedent the Undertaker maintained the short-term, nostalgia-driven status quo. Roman Reigns was jeered out of the Silicon Valley at WrestleMania 31. He required an upgrade to recover, and thus Wyatt was installed to reheat him in his new guise of Deus Ex Machina App.
If a wrestler needed a currency boost, there was an app for that. ‘Taker required an opponent to celebrate his 25-year anniversary. Enter Bray Wyatt. The Rock and John Cena needed - or were needed - to make cameos at WrestleMania 32. Enter the Wyatt Family, the first divorce of which didn’t take. WWE needed something to counteract the buzz generated by BROKEN Matt Hardy and the Final Deletion. Enter the Wyatt Family Vs. New Day “compound” segment. Randy Orton needed to be reinserted into the WWE Heavyweight title picture. Enter Bray Wyatt and a fantastically awful supernatural fluff storyline. Wyatt projected bugs onto the WrestleMania 32 canvas, but still wandered dumbly into a single, match-winning RKO. Finn Bálor needed an opponent to restore him to his 2016 peak. Enter…you know the rest.