What’s the story?
According to E-Wrestling News, Bray Wyatt’s move to Raw in the Superstar Shake-up was a last minute switch. In fact, the announced House Of Horrors match between Randy Orton and Bray Wyatt for the WWE Championship that is now on the Raw-exclusive show, Payback, was originally slated to take place at Backlash, which is a SmackDown-exclusive PPV.
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Randy Orton and Bray Wyatt have been tied at the hip since the brand extension in the WWE. Orton joined the Wyatt Family in the fall of 2016 and they became the WWE SmackDown Live Tag Team Champions after beating Rhyno and Heath Slater.
Randy Orton won the 2017 Royal Rumble match and became the number one contender for the WWE Championship at WrestleMania. At the same time, Bray Wyatt won the 2017 Elimination Chamber match and became the WWE Champion for the first time.
Soon after Bray Wyatt won the championship, Orton turned on his family member. At that point, the two were on a collision course and their match was on at WrestleMania 33. Orton beat Bray at WrestleMania and is now the WWE Champion.
The heart of the matter
With the Wyatt and Orton rematch set since the SmackDown Live after-Mania show, it was shocking to see Bray Wyatt appear on Raw during the Superstar Shake-up. As reported, this rematch was originally planned to take place at the next SmackDown PPV, Backlash.
However, because of Bray’s apparent last minute move to Raw, it will now take place at Payback in less than three weeks.
What’s next?
On SmackDown Live, Bray Wyatt was positioned as a top act on the show. However, now with all the talent on the Raw brand, its hard to see how he will be able to maintain that top act status with this move.
Author’s take
I’m surprised that the WWE is moving Bray Wyatt. Not because of him actually changing brands, but because they are going back on the integrity of brand split and having a SmackDown match take place on a Raw PPV.
To me, this is a dangerous road to go down and one that will start to make the split meaningless. If the WWE continues to go down the path of having matches on whatever show they want because they want it, there won’t be two truly separate brands.
Sure, the Orton vs. Wyatt feud is not the best and at this point, I’m sceptical of the notion of Bray Wyatt as a main event draw in the WWE. That said if WWE really made the decision to move Wyatt at the last minute, the move seems to have been done out of panic.
The residual effects of the move itself will be far worse than continuing the Orton/Wyatt program for another month.
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