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In the world of WWE, it can be very difficult for a new, young Superstar to get a foothold. A couple of recent call-ups from NXT have fared better than expected (such as Ricochet, for example, and after a brief period of struggle, Andrade). But it's tough to break-in to WWE these days unless you're already a star coming from somewhere else (unless your names are Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson).
One very specific, and somewhat peculiar case, is Bray Wyatt. The character portrayed by the third generation wrestler Windham Rotunda was one that excited many people when it came to light in NXT in 2012.
The Wyatt Family, after weeks of vignettes warning of their arrival, appeared on RAW in the summer of 2013 to attack Kane. This made sense. You go after the biggest guy in the yard. Kane's a dependable veteran who has given himself up many times to make younger, newer talent look good. That is exactly what Kane did, and it immediately propelled Wyatt (along with Harper and Rowan) to stardom.
Wyatt stayed strong throughout the rest of 2013, which saw him and his Family mostly dominate a feud against CM Punk and Daniel Bryan, both big Superstars and multiple time World Champions. Wyatt even got a singles victory over Bryan at the Royal Rumble in 2014.
That was a very significant victory for Wyatt. It marked the conclusion of his second big storyline, both of which he came out as the winner. In the second, he was able to defeat the man who would win the main event of WrestleMania less than three months later.
Things were looking very good for Wyatt. He was on top of the world (or, actually, he had it in his hands) and he looked unbeatable. But he didn't stay undefeated for long. The Firefly Fun House and The Fiend have reinvigorated Bray Wyatt after a number of disappointing years, but there's a reason those years were disappointing.
#6 Randy Orton (WrestleMania 33, 2017)
Bray Wyatt had been having a rough go of it. After a strong, dominant start, the leader of the Wyatt Family suffered a number of crippling defeats. There were victories that peppered his timeline, but they were few and far-between, and he was never able to follow up and string together a set of big wins and stayed stagnant. To sum up a long story with a short, cliched sentence: Wyatt was all talk, no action.
It seemed like things were going to turn around for Wyatt in the latter half of 2016. He confronted Randy Orton and got the better of the veteran Superstar at almost every turn. It came to the point where Orton seemed to take the phrase "if you can't beat 'em, join'em" to heart, and joined Wyatt and Luke Harper to create a new Wyatt Family. The team would have great success for the rest of the year and into 2017. They were together for around four months. Along with Harper they became SmackDown Tag Team Champions (defending it like The New Day, with the Freebird Rule) but lost the titles after only a few weeks. It was the Harper and Orton team which lost the belts, causing Wyatt to attack Harper and oust him from the Family.
As it turned out, this was all part of Orton's plan to weaken Wyatt. He struck with the Wayyt Family leader for a little bit longer, as the men teamed up in the Royal Rumble match, making it to the final three men. Roman Reigns eliminated Wyatt (Randy could have helped, but didn't) and was very shortly eliminated by Orton, who would claim a WrestleMania title shot.
Bray Wyatt finally won the WWE Championship, to the joy of his fans, in the Elimination Chamber match the following month, and Orton, as the No. 1 contender, pledged that out of respect and reverence for The Eater Of Worlds, he would not challenge him for the title at WrestleMania (he could have challenged Goldberg instead, but that would have been a bad idea).
In the end, Orton would burn down the cabin where Wyatt spent much of his life, and the location in which Sister Abigail was supposedly buried. He revealed that joining the Wyatt Family was a ruse from the beginning, and being able to take the WWE Title from Wyatt at WrestleMania would just be icing on the cake.
With the fans almost split down the middle in terms of supporting the Champion and Challenger, Bray Wyatt would go on to lose his championship after only 49 days. This would mark the final big loss of his career to that point, and possibly his biggest one of them all. He also never received a rematch for the championship.
#5 Chris Jericho (Battleground 2014)
Chris Jericho is a legend in professional wrestling. Over a decade ago, he was able to garner an agreement with WWE that allowed him to essentially come and go as he pleased. In 2013, Jericho returned to the ring after a nearly six-month hiatus. He spent the majority of his six-month comeback tour that year as a stepping stone for some younger Superstars.
He lost to Fandango (in Fandango's first official match) at WrestleMania 29. Jericho had a one-off big match where he was essentially just a body to lose to a returning CM Punk in Chicago. He failed to win the Intercontinental Championship while feuding with guys like Wade Barrett, Curtis Axel, and Ryback. In the end, a loss to Axel and an attack by Ryback ended his return period. He would be gone for nearly a year.
In the middle of 2014, Jericho unexpectedly returned. He was immediately attacked by The Wyatt Family. Jericho and Wyatt would have a one-on-one match 3 weeks later at Battleground -- and Wyatt... lost?
Wyatt needed a big win after losing two out of three matches to John Cena. The first of those three matches was his first pinfall loss since his debut eight months prior. Chris Jericho would be the perfect rebound, or so he thought. Even with attempted help from Harper and Rowan, The Eater Of Worlds was unable to defeat Jericho and took his second pinfall loss since joining WWE.
He would go on to defeat Y2J at SummerSlam a few weeks later and again in a steel cage match on an episode of RAW. Wyatt was able to use those two wins to bounce back, and he would finish 2014 by defeating Dean Ambrose in four straight matches between the end of November into the very beginning of January.
That strong period for Wyatt is what makes the loss to Jericho so odd. If he was going to return to being unbeatable after a brief hiccup against John Cena, why start his return to dominance with a loss to an expendable opponent?
#4 The Undertaker (WrestleMania 31, 2015)
With the exception of a brief period of weakness from April 2014 through July 2014, Bray Wyatt had been a dominant force of terror for almost two years. Wyatt dropped his followers, Harper and Rowan, near the end of 2014 and became a singular force, seemingly stronger than he had ever been before.
He no longer had anybody to provide physical outside interference, but instead he amped up the psychological warfare, very similar to the way The Undertaker used to confound, confuse, bewilder and straight-up frighten his opponents. He seemed primed and ready to take over for the aging Undertaker as WWE's resident "face of fear".
Wyatt had his opportunity at WrestleMania 31 in April 2015. He called himself "The New Face of Fear" and tried to coax The Undertaker to respond, and finally, when he popped out of a casket that everyone assumed Undertaker would be inside of, The Deadman answered.
The Streak had already ended one year prior at the hands of Brock Lesnar, so it seemed very possible, if not entirely likely, that Wyatt would not only defeat The Undertaker, but possibly even end the long career of The Deadman. The Undertaker persevered, however, and defeated the much younger and stronger Wyatt. His body may have been breaking down, but his mind games were still superior.
Sadly for Wyatt, this marked the beginning of a downfall. He licked his wounds by going after Ryback, who at the time was easy prey. It wasn't so easy once the summer ended.
#3 Roman Reigns (Hell in a Cell 2015)
One year after Bray Wyatt interfered in a Hell in a Cell match between Reigns' former Shield brothers, Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins, he found himself facing the third member of the formerly dominant trio inside that very structure. The Eater Of Worlds was staring across the ring at the most dominant of them all, Roman Reigns.
Wyatt was unable to exorcise the ghost of WrestleMania (his loss at WrestleMania XXX was his first pinfall loss) when he was defeated by The Undertaker. It's possible that he brought Luke Harper and later, Erick Rowan back into his Family because of that loss. Harper returned during a match with Roman Reigns, interfering and helping Wyatt take the victory.
A month later, Reigns sought the help of his former Shield partner and prior victim of Bray Wyatt, Dean Ambrose. Ambrose had been unable to defeat Wyatt at the end of 2014, losing every single match the two men had. That wasn't the case this time, as, with the help of Reigns, two of the three former members of The Shield defeated two of the three former members of The Wyatt Family (Bray and Harper) at SummerSlam.
Things went back-and-forth between the groups, and a new member of the Wyatt Family entered the mix -- the monstrous Braun Strowman. At Night of Champions in September he helped his Family defeat Roman, Ambrose, and their partner, another former Wyatt victim, Chris Jericho, in a six-man tag match. Finally, it was down to just Reigns and Wyatt alone inside the demonic structure. The Eater Of Worlds didn't have enough to fight on his own and was defeated by Reigns, proving again that while he could sweep in and take out lesser targets. Wyatt, when unaided, may have been a big fish that lived easiest in a small pond.
#2 The Undertaker and Kane (Survivor Series 2015)
It's possible that the loss to Roman Reigns inside Hell in a Cell caused Bray Wyatt to go off his rocker (pun intended). On the same night that Wyatt lost to Reigns in a Hell in a Cell match, The Undertaker lost one of his own to Brock Lesnar. After the match ended, The Eater Of Worlds led his family down to the ring to attack The Deadman, and they carried him off into the abyss. They did the same thing to Kane the next night, in a moment that was eerily similar to what the did to the man in the summer of 2013.
This time, however, things would not go the way Wyatt intended. In 2013, Wyatt, along with his followers, defeated Kane and send him out of the spotlight. While he no longer had a problem with The Big Red Monster, he still used the man to get at his brother, who Wyatt failed to defeat earlier in the year at WrestleMania.
It worked. The attacks on both The Undertaker and Kane provoked the men and led to the reformation of the Brothers of Destruction on the 25th anniversary of the birth of The Deadman character.
Kane and The Undertaker made quick work of Wyatt and Harper, even with Rowan and Strowman interfering on their behalf. The Brothers of Destruction essentially beat all four members of the Wyatt Family, and it barely took them 10 minutes to do it.
It was probably this loss that sent Wyatt into the tailspin that would eventually lead to The Fiend. Wyatt got hurt a couple of times, picked random fights with people he had no actual interest in finishing off, and generally drifted around like a ship with a torn sail in the middle of the sea.
He briefly made it back to the shore thanks to Randy Orton, but it turned out that Orton was inside Wyatt's mind the whole time. Orton helped him, three years after his debut, win his first-ever championship in WWE (SD Tag Titles) and even motivated him enough to finally lead him to win the WWE Championship, a title that he fell short from gaining on a number of occasions.
But it was never real. Wyatt tried to replace The Undertaker two different times and failed both times, the first on his own, and the second time with help. That sent him into madness, and the brief run of success from late 2016 into early 2017 was all in his imagination. His final run, against, and then with, Matt Hardy, also never happened.
#1 John Cena (WrestleMania XXX, 2014)
The first loss. Some come back from it stronger while others crumble. Some just keep moving forward. In the case of Bray Wyatt, it goes deeper than that. Wyatt, along with Harper and Rowan, was untouchable from July 2013 through March 2014. Eight months of destruction may have put fear into the hearts of most of the roster, but not John Cena. More importantly, the preiod didn't put confidence into Wyatt. He talked a big game but when it came time to win, he couldn't finish the job.
WWE went in an interesting direction with this feud. Wyatt spent weeks trying to convince Cena to embrace his dark side, to show that he was a monster. The Eater Of Worlds told Cena that he knew the last decade had been just a facade. The Cenation Leader wasn't truly a "shake the hands, kiss the babies" kind of guy. He did it because it made him popular and made him money.
He was right. John Cena never admitted to it. WWE, via the commentary team or otherwise, never admitted to it, but he was right. Cena had a dark side. A very dark side. A dark side that he embraced for years and used to help him win and defend championships. Cena was brutal with both his words and his actions. That is why this rivalry was so problematic. Was Wyatt simply trying to remind Cena of something he had decided to forget, or were they rewriting history and acting like the record champion was a complete saint and always took the high road? Brilliant (poorly done, but a brilliant idea) if the former, or frustrating (at best) if the latter.
In any event, Wyatt failed to get Cena to embrace the hate. Cena, at one point in the match, held a chair in his hand while The Eater Of Worlds kneeled, in the middle of the ring, begging Cena to use it. The Cenation Leader looked conflicted and maybe a little bit upset, but decided against using the chair.
Wyatt was in his head. Sadly for him, his mind games were not strong enough, and Cena was able to defeat him. This was Bray's first big match, and not only did he fail to win, but he did so while applying mind games and employing his family members for help.
If you work backwards from his team with Matt Hardy, every weave, twist, and turn will come back to this loss. Every time he needs to win, he gets desperate and does something self-destructive. This was the start. This match was why his successful journeys last only very briefly. His confidence, which was already frail, was shattered. It's happened over and over throughout his career. Hopefully, The Fiend is the beginning of a new Bray Wyatt. Time will tell.
