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WWE's most enigmatic and promising group: The Wyatt Family. Bray Wyatt, alongside Luke Harper, Erick Rowan, and later Braun Strowman, captivated audiences with their eerie presence and compelling storylines. But despite their potential, WWE failed to capitalize on the faction's unique appeal. A detailed analysis of their matches and promos. let's uncover how WWE's creative decisions ultimately led to the faction's downfall.
You can also visit our site: https://www.sportskeeda.com/wwe
#braywyatt #lukeharper #erickrowan #braunstrowman #wyattfamily #wwe #wrestling #sportskeedawrestling
Play now to find out - https://www.sportskeeda.com/wwe/brainbuster-wwe-player-guessing-game
WWE's most enigmatic and promising group: The Wyatt Family. Bray Wyatt, alongside Luke Harper, Erick Rowan, and later Braun Strowman, captivated audiences with their eerie presence and compelling storylines. But despite their potential, WWE failed to capitalize on the faction's unique appeal. A detailed analysis of their matches and promos. let's uncover how WWE's creative decisions ultimately led to the faction's downfall.
You can also visit our site: https://www.sportskeeda.com/wwe
#braywyatt #lukeharper #erickrowan #braunstrowman #wyattfamily #wwe #wrestling #sportskeedawrestling
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SportsTranscript
00:00I would like to welcome you all to the era of Wyatt!
00:10Hi, I'm Daniel, nice to meet you.
00:25He introduced me to carrot cake!
00:30Kill me!
00:33Kill me!
00:37There's some kind of boss here, man!
00:40You ain't seen nothing yet!
01:00It's been years since their chapter together officially came to a close, but the men involved will always be interconnected, even beyond the realms of this current lifetime.
01:12Characters that were so special, they'll be remembered by a generation of wrestling fans.
01:18We tend to think of the Wyatt family primarily as the three core members, and we'll cover that, even though they've had seven members overall, ranging from one night to a whole year.
01:28They were lightning in a bottle, but to say that WWE really just missed the mark with executing on their potential would sort of be an understatement.
01:39Their tenure together lasted really a little less than four years, if you look at the periods that they were together.
01:45With the upcoming rumored arrival of Uncle Howdy and the revival of all things Wyatt in WWE, what do you think of their lasting legacy and how it will evolve in this new iteration?
01:59Let us know in the comments below.
02:01It was still infuriating to some degree for either diehard or even casual fans to see how this team that's so capable of so much more never really got to do more than just a certain amount.
02:12But maybe that was just beyond their control.
02:15So what went wrong with the Wyatt family, and why did WWE miss the opportunity to create a faction on the same level as The Shield or The New Day?
02:24Or did they create a faction on that level, and we're just simply taking them for granted?
02:29We're going back to 2012, when Bray Wyatt, Luke Harper, and Erick Rowan were still in the developmental stages of their WWE career.
02:38It was a torn pectoral muscle for Bray Wyatt that had him ultimately lead to creating the group.
02:44In his brief stint in WWE NXT, which was still very much a bright group of young talent being developed under WWE's new system, he was out of action and ended up adopting two sons.
02:57A lonesome trucker by the name of Luke Harper, who wrestled on The Independence's Brodie Lee, and the big, ferocious, red-bearded Viking who's not a Viking, Erick Rowan.
03:08Wyatt himself had already tried his hand at becoming a leader.
03:12Wyatt had been led by other talents, competing in the NXT game show days, and had a very short stint on the main roster.
03:19But now, rebooting himself, he was leading other people, and led Rowan and Harper to the inaugural NXT Championship titles.
03:29Bray Wyatt's sons, as he dubbed them, eventually captured the prize, and held onto it for a few months.
03:36But the NXT Tag Team titles would have taken a back seat, because the trio were due for their main roster call-up because of their out-of-the-screen mysticism.
03:46They were something different. They were something that felt like it needed to be seen by more eyeballs.
03:53In late May of 2013, WWE began airing vignettes to foreshadow the debut of the Wyatt Family on Monday Night Raw.
04:03Only the small-niche crowd that watched Bray Wyatt on NXT knew what he was capable of.
04:08He was a second-generation talent, he knew the business, and he was playing with characters, ideas, and concepts that really no one was doing in the wrestling landscape, especially in WWE.
04:20It felt like something very unique.
04:23In a somewhat supernatural presentation, the Wyatt Family were getting ahead of their debut instantly, and made comparisons to The Undertaker.
04:32Yeah, they were getting the vignette rollout with hype built in before they were ever seen by the mainstream audience.
04:39But in reality, Bray Wyatt represented more than just a cult leader and a supernatural figure.
04:45Wyatt was akin to a cult itself.
04:48They targeted Undertaker's brother, Kane, as a wise choice, played into the kind of imagery that WWE wanted to present in the Wyatt Family,
04:56and it led to the biggest win of a young Bray Wyatt's career at Summerslam that year.
05:02The sight of Harper and Rowan carrying the Big Red Machine away from the ring was surreal, and once again led to The Undertaker comparisons.
05:10And that didn't really help anybody in the long run.
05:13These guys were still new to a lot of people, and they were already tangling with the big bad voodoo daddies of WWE and Kane and The Undertaker, and now they had to deliver on that hype.
05:23But overall, it was a great way to introduce the Wyatt Family as a dominant force.
05:28Even Harper and Rowan went on a bit of an undefeated streak for a few months before the brother duo of Cody Rhodes and Goldust defeated them in October of that year.
05:36Within a few months of their debut, they found themselves feuding with two boldified multi-time champions, CM Punk and Daniel Bryan.
05:43As you might recall, that feud really boiled down to Bray Wyatt trying to cast a spell over Daniel Bryan,
05:48and his crew beating him down into submission until he finally agreed to join the cult.
05:55It really came to a head though, because this was in conflict with the entire rise of Daniel Bryan as a solo superstar, and the abrupt exit of CM Punk from WWE.
06:04In mid-January 2014, when Daniel Bryan defected from the group in front of the wildest crowd reaction inside a steel cage,
06:12gave us an iconic moment where he sat on top of that steel cage and got the entire crowd to start chanting yes.
06:19It was perfectly synced in unison, and it wouldn't have been as big a moment without Bray Wyatt being the fundamental evil foe.
06:27The idea of him casting spells and mind trickery over his opponents, and those he's made loyal to him, defined his character.
06:36Yeah, it may have launched Daniel Bryan, but it really showed you what Bray was capable of.
06:39Bryan may have won the battle, but Bray won the war when he defeated him in the 2014 Royal Rumble to end their short but memorable feud.
06:54The Shield vs. the Wyatts family in hindsight was one of those rare moments where everything clicked, and everyone played their role to perfection, and WWE really nailed the presentation of it.
07:05Sitting at home, they ate it up, and for good reason.
07:09There were pauses where you could just see the crowd when they faced off at Elimination Chamber just heating up the moment,
07:16and these two groups were determined to deliver on the hype.
07:20And on that night, the Wyatts picked up a decisive victory against the Shield.
07:25Of course, there were a lot of Monday morning quarterbacks after this pay-per-view claiming that this match, which was not too long before WrestleMania, should have been a WrestleMania match.
07:34No, we got the Shield vs. Kane and the New Age Outlaws instead.
07:39This instant classic six-man tag team match has a current Cage Match.net rating of 9.1 out of 10.
07:47That's right, after the Wyatts went 2-0 against the Shield after another win against them on Monday Night Raw,
07:54WWE decided to blow the whole thing off on an episode of the most forgettable TV show that WWE has, Main Event.
08:01Some of you are being reminded that Main Event is a TV show, and I agree with you.
08:07There's probably some great matches on there that we're not catching.
08:09What other great matches should we know about? Tell us in the comments.
08:12It was all too brief, but that's probably for the best because it may not have been the most memorable as it lasted longer than a month.
08:20The next rivalry would be a very special one, one that fans had anticipated for a long time.
08:25As evil as Bray Wyatt was, he needed to face someone who was quite the opposite.
08:32That's right, John Cena, the most idealistic babyface of a generation.
08:38And they would face off at WrestleMania New Orleans with a battle of morals with John Cena,
08:44who always had his detractors finally turn heel, finally give himself a little bit more of a gritty edge.
08:51Yeah, he never succumbed to the opportunity to do so, even with Bray Wyatt offering to turn his back and let him get hit with a chair.
08:59No, Cena picked up the victory against Bray, a match that some people thought could have been a really defining victory for Bray Wyatt.
09:06And John Cena was no longer the absolute top-of-the-car guy anymore. He could have took the hit, right?
09:13Instead, yeah, we got Cena wins.
09:15After this, Bray Wyatt found himself in the mix for the Money in the Bank ladder match, but obviously didn't walk away with the briefcase.
09:21He then set his sights on the verified great veteran in Chris Jericho, a feud that many felt on paper would have been exciting, but was pretty solid.
09:31Not the barn burner he could have been.
09:34Yeah, he lost to Jericho at the Battleground Premium Live event, Pay-Per-View back then, got his win back at SummerSlam,
09:40but the best match they would have wouldn't be on Pay-Per-View or streaming on the WWE Network paywall, no.
09:48It was a steel cage match on Monday Night Raw, where the Wyatts at ringside, Harper and Rowan, were able to keep Jericho from escaping the cage.
09:59Bray Wyatt would batter his knee and they would scramble with the cage door open, and Bray Wyatt stumbling out to victory.
10:05It's one of the better WWE cage matches in the 2010s on television.
10:11And then, suddenly after that, the Wyatt family was disbanded.
10:15At least, for the first time.
10:17After just one year together on the main roster, where they were very, very over and crowds would lose their minds,
10:24waving their cell phones in the air, singing he's got the whole world in his hands.
10:32Yeah, perhaps the idea of turning Bray Wyatt into a big single star meant he had to get away from Rowan and Harper.
10:39But that really didn't do much for anybody.
10:42Although Luke Harper did briefly become the Intercontinental Champion and had some banger underrated matches around this time.
10:49After a brief reunion at the Royal Rumble that ended with the three men brawling with each other, they once again went their separate ways.
10:59Bray Wyatt had another lose a big one match against The Undertaker at WrestleMania.
11:05This was The Undertaker coming back from losing the streak, yes, to Brock Lesnar.
11:10But he didn't appear at all in the entire build to the match that was built around Bray Wyatt leaning into the supernatural and not The Undertaker.
11:19The most supernatural guy.
11:22It was weird. 2015 overall was kind of a bland year for WWE and arguably one of the weaker ones considering the whole PG thing.
11:30WWE just had an inconsistency issue overall.
11:34Apart from Seth Rollins having a run as World Heavyweight Champion, Bray Wyatt's rivalry with Roman Reigns was a pretty memorable one around this time.
11:42Despite the up and down booking, Bray Wyatt was established as a real bad dude that some fans would get behind.
11:47And there were still mixed responses to Roman Reigns.
11:51He went over the women and children, but the buddies in the audience, the bros, were still running with Bray.
11:56Their feud got very, very serious and had maybe one of the most underrated Hell in a Cell matches of all time.
12:03A show that WrestleZone.com tweeted out was a show stealer on that year's Hell in a Cell pay-per-view.
12:09This led to the reunion of the Wyatt Family, with Luke Harper first helping Bray defeat Roman Reigns before Braun Strowman would be introduced as the Black Sheep.
12:21Yes, that Braun Strowman, and the newest addition to the fold on Monday Night Raw after Summerslam.
12:28Braun Strowman should have ideally added a whole new layer of intrigue to the Wyatt Family in this incarnation.
12:35But it's important to remember that the guy who was called upon to perform in front of millions of people live every single week
12:42literally had seven matches in his professional wrestling career at that time.
12:47Erick Rowan would also return and make it a four-person unit.
12:51The Wyatt Family should have been stronger than ever.
12:54But we know you're out there watching, and if you remember what happened, you're going to be pessimistic and say,
12:58but that's not what happened.
13:00Yeah, because that's not what happened.
13:03After Bray Wyatt lost to Roman Reigns in a pretty darn good Hell in a Cell match I mentioned earlier,
13:08he targeted The Undertaker, who needed his opponent for the 25th anniversary of the show where he debuted the Survivor Series.
13:17Bray and Luke Harper teamed up in a losing effort to the Brothers of Destruction keen in The Undertaker,
13:24and that didn't do them any favors with their overall image.
13:26This was the supernatural parallel to them.
13:30This could have been a really great moment, and would Undertaker be any less of a legend?
13:35Would Kane be any less of a legend if they lost this match?
13:39I know, retrospective booking of a match over 10 years ago, or nearly 10 years ago.
13:44We get that WWE would want The Undertaker to have the wholesome moment in his 25th anniversary,
13:49but sacrificing the Wyatt family at that very moment proved to be a bad decision week to week.
13:57Even after a one-sided feud against a few ECW legends that was brief,
14:01the Wyatt family lost a lot of their momentum and were struggling despite regular TV time
14:07and all of the support and production behind everything that the Wyatts required to be the Wyatts on TV.
14:13The up and down of a WWE career continued its way up for Bray Wyatt heading into 2016
14:20when he and the Wyatt family targeted Brock Lesnar and eliminated him from the Royal Rumbles.
14:27It was seemingly going to be a very odd pairing.
14:30We were going to get Bray Wyatt and his supernatural faction
14:34against the legitimate badass skills of a former UFC champion,
14:38and it would be a marquee match at WrestleMania.
14:40Except that's not how things played out.
14:44Dean Ambrose ended up being the opponent for Brock Lesnar
14:48in a match that some feel just also did live up to its marquee value
14:52and was considered a stinker in some reviews.
14:56Bray Wyatt wasn't even technically on the card.
14:59The Wyatt family would have a role on WrestleMania,
15:02the grandest stage of them all against the biggest movie star in the world,
15:05returning to the WrestleMania stage for a six-second match.
15:11Erick Rowan with the Wyatts at ringside.
15:14Six-second match. You know he didn't win it.
15:17Yeah, yeah, that's kind of obvious.
15:19The Wyatt family were just used as a prop up for The Rock and John Cena to get their big pop.
15:24Now, clearly they played a big role.
15:26They were the bad guy faction.
15:28Bad guy faction.
15:30But that's kind of all it was becoming.
15:32They would be built up only to lose against big names.
15:35They would never get the rub themselves.
15:37And WWE did follow up on the Brock Lesnar match.
15:41And it just wasn't a singles match.
15:43Instead, it was Luke Harper and Bray Wyatt facing Brock Lesnar
15:46in a handicap match on a WWE Network special before WrestleMania.
15:50And Lesnar won in a whopping four-minute match where Wyatt never even entered the ring.
15:55So, yeah, that was worth it.
15:57No, no it wasn't.
15:59Luke Harper suffered an injury that would keep him out for a good chunk of the year,
16:02turning the Wyatt family back into a three-man group.
16:06Things looked like they were taking a genuinely new and exciting direction, though, post-WrestleMania 32.
16:12Despite all the bad handling they had to go through,
16:15the Wyatts still had a lot of love from the fans,
16:18who recognized their potential and were getting into the entire lore of everything Wyatt,
16:23where that house was and who these characters were.
16:26WWE seemed to be setting the wheels in motion for the Wyatts to finally become good guys.
16:33Fan favorites.
16:35A two whole weeks that lasted.
16:37It was great. It was different.
16:39But Bray Wyatt suffered an injury at a live event,
16:42and those plans, circumstantially, had to be scrapped.
16:45When he returned a few months later, they were villains once again
16:49and targeted The New Day, a bright and positively-minded,
16:52comedically-oriented group who needed to be tested and be given a little bit more of an edge.
16:58Yes, Kofi Kingston, Xavier Woods, and Big E needed to be pushed, yeah,
17:04but they would unfortunately be presented in something that felt like a rip-off
17:08of what TNA Wrestling was doing with the broken Matt Hardy,
17:12which saw them having a big fight on the Wyatt compound.
17:17It wasn't exactly inspiring, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a fun match.
17:20It wasn't featured on a premium live event, but rather on an episode of Monday at Raw.
17:25The newly reintroduced brand split at the time proved to be the catalyst, though,
17:30for a change for the Wyatt family yet again.
17:33WWE reportedly around this time had their sights on making Big Braun Strowman
17:39into a singles main event monster, and they separated from the group and drafted him to Raw.
17:45Bray Wyatt and Erick Rowan were drafted to SmackDown.
17:47Rowan would unfortunately suffer an injury that prevented him from being a part of what would be the new lineup.
17:54The deeply layered character of Bray Wyatt would now find methodical opposition in Randy Orton,
18:01and also around this time, Luke Harper would return to the fold to be at his side.
18:06This time, though, Randy Orton would fall under the spell of the Wyatt family
18:11after their pursuit of his allegiance, becoming an official member of the group.
18:17It was an intriguing reversal of roles for Randy Orton.
18:20He had led factions, been a manipulator, been a real mind game player himself,
18:26and now he was being played.
18:28Or was he playing Bray Wyatt the entire time?
18:32Yeah, a lot of us saw that on the surface, and though it was played out week to week
18:36and even saw the pairing win a tag team championship on SmackDown together,
18:40it was certainly a very interesting thing.
18:42The trio of Wyatt, Harper, and Orton would defend the SmackDown titles under the Friedberg rule.
18:49The reign wasn't meant to last long, because there was a much bigger plan ahead.
18:54To start 2017, Orton would go on to win the Royal Rumble for the second time in his career,
19:01while Bray Wyatt became the WWE Champion, dethroning John Cena in a star-studded Elimination Chamber match.
19:07All of the dots were connecting. When were we going to see it?
19:12It may have been predictable, but you wanted the payoff.
19:16Randy Orton joining the Wyatt family was a huge win-win situation,
19:21because it took him out of the perpetual cycle of being in unimportant storylines,
19:26and also helped Wyatt and Harper become the twisted characters they were.
19:31Orton was always twisted, and first promised not to use his Royal Rumble opportunity
19:37to challenge his faction mate Bray Wyatt, but his turn came all too sudden.
19:45It was expected. It simply wasn't well executed, though.
19:49From here, it was a train wreck in the eyes of some.
19:52What started off strong just wasn't going to keep its momentum.
19:55It was pure week-to-week storyline sports entertainment,
19:57but the match that they would build to at WrestleMania for the WWE Championship
20:02simply wouldn't pay off.
20:04Yeah, it involved those projections of worms and bugs on the ring.
20:08A little bit too much of the sports entertainment stuff, right?
20:12That's how it ended. It would have been okay if Bray Wyatt retained the title,
20:15but Randy Orton won it at WrestleMania, and it just felt like, okay, sure.
20:21Yeah, this in and of itself effectively marked the end of the Wyatt family,
20:25and not the Wyatt story, obviously.
20:28They would briefly be together after WrestleMania,
20:31before quietly disbanding the official run of the faction had come to a close.
20:36It's hard to believe that more time has passed since the Wyatt family disbanded
20:40than the entire time they were together.
20:43Rowe and Harper would reunite later in 2018, being rebranded as the Bludgeon Brothers,
20:49going on to dominate the SmackDown Tag Team division
20:52during the Uso's New Day prime time.
20:56Luke Harper eventually found himself in a frustrated position,
21:00wanting to be released from WWE, but not having that granted until 2019.
21:05He had an extremely eventful run in 2020 in All Elite Wrestling,
21:10WWE's main competitor, where he rebranded himself as the leader of the Dark Order,
21:15and would truly become a standout superstar for the breakout promotion.
21:19Unfortunately, he would pass away at the age of 41.
21:24The large and formidable Erick Rowan found himself in two storylines,
21:28one that saw him become Daniel Bryan's sidekick during his Planet Champions era,
21:33while the other was a mystery cage at ringside that turned out to be a big mechanical spider.
21:40He was also released around the same time as the Wyatt family,
21:43Luke Harper left the company as well.
21:45He would continue to be active in entertainment,
21:47performing in small media roles in films and other projects.
21:51Braun Strowman, on the other hand,
21:53ended up having a lot of success as a single star, the Monster Among Men,
21:58but some creative mishandling and a start and stop push
22:02saw his career have a little bit of a stall.
22:05Even when he won the big one, the WWE Universal Championship,
22:08which was during those tough early days of the pandemic with no fans,
22:12it was because Roman Reigns pulled out of WrestleMania 36,
22:14he took it off Goldberg.
22:16Strowman was unfortunately the placeholder champion during a very challenging time,
22:21that's not something you can blame him.
22:23Bray Wyatt, of course, went on to win numerous world championships,
22:27cementing an immortal legacy,
22:29reinventing himself as more than just the cheap, feared takeoff character,
22:34but the Fiend,
22:36and it was one that some people believe was limited
22:39by Vince McMahon's questionable chaotic changes at the last minute
22:42with creative decisions.
22:44The pandemic was also challenging for Bray Wyatt and Braun Strowman.
22:48Both were abruptly released by WWE in those challenging times.
22:52Bray and Braun would eventually make their return separately as solo superstars.
22:57Bray Wyatt's return was done with a long, orchestrated puzzle piece
23:02piled together of online QR code samples and clues.
23:07It was quite cool.
23:09When he eventually walked through the curtain and out of the light,
23:12the pop was insane.
23:14But the return of Bray Wyatt to WWE would be brief.
23:18His special place in the hearts and minds of fans
23:21was unfortunately a fleeting experience,
23:24as he would sadly pass away in 2023.
23:28It's tragic to think that two key figure members of the Wyatt family
23:32are no longer with us,
23:34but they have left a lasting impression, together and separately.
23:38Nobody even needed the power of retrospect
23:40to realize that WWE could have done so much more
23:44with the Wyatt family when they were together.
23:47The Undertaker comparisons hurt Bray Wyatt a little bit,
23:50but he created his own magic, his own phenom, if you will.
23:55And the hot and cold handling of that really played a direct role
23:59in not sustaining the momentum.
24:01It was there. You would feel it when they would come into an arena together.
24:05Yeah, and there were so much more expectations to expand the group
24:08beyond just men.
24:10We never got to see a legitimate Sister Abigail,
24:13and of course, Bray Wyatt wearing a cloak against Finn Balor.
24:17Let's forget that whole thing, right?
24:20Even when they reunited in 2015,
24:22it felt like it was just kind of put together,
24:24and there was nothing honestly planned.
24:26Far from how it is now,
24:28where there's an actual long-term plan in place
24:31for the upcoming arrival of the Wyatt Six,
24:35a group that is expected to be led by Uncle Howdy,
24:37a.k.a. Bo Dallas, Bray Wyatt's brother.
24:42There was so much talent in that group,
24:44so much larger-than-life personalities
24:46that truly brought in a lot of energy
24:50and represented audience members
24:53that really wanted to see something
24:55that felt like it leapt off the page and off the screen.
24:58The Wyatt family did that,
25:00and they will surely have a place in the WWE Hall of Fame in the future.
25:04Rest in peace, Luke Harper.
25:05Rest in peace, Bray Wyatt.
25:07We can look back in fondness over what was and what they created,
25:11those standout moments,
25:13and that special energy they had every time they performed.
25:35.