While the highly anticipated “Fatal Five-Way” match at Extreme Rules this coming Sunday night has plenty of subplots to keep WWE busy for some time, did the company give up on Bray Wyatt as champion too soon?
The match – which includes Wyatt, Samoa Joe, Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins and Finn Balor – should be the highlight of the night. The feeling among many, and the talk of the Internet is Balor winning the match and facing Brock Lesnar at the Great Balls of Fire pay-per-view. That does nothing for me, and creates plenty of problems with booking this summer.
Wyatt, who is the former WWE World Champion on SmackDown Live, is still the most interesting character on the current Raw roster. A potential match with Lesnar is full of anecdotes that would make any WWE fan salivate. Unfortunately, it looks like the Eater of Worlds won’t headline a match many fans have wanted to see since last year’s WrestleMania showcase.
WWE pulled the plug on Wyatt’s run as champion at WrestleMania 33, losing to Randy Orton, who dropped the title a couple of weeks ago to Jinder Mahal. If the reason for taking the belt off Wyatt and moving him to Monday nights was based on money, then shame on the company for moving in a different direction.
Mahal is the right performer to carry the torch for now, but as I have discussed before, the angle only has a short shelf life. Wyatt has been a central figure of cryptic analysis and fumbled meaning for some time. Fans identify with him. Talk of a series of matches with Reigns after this pay-per-view doesn’t appease anyone. The loss of Braun Strowman has sent WWE creative into a tailspin. All the while, Lesnar and Paul Heyman are sitting back, holding the title hostage.
There is nothing fair about this to the fans and the company, which is scurrying to make sense of everything with a match that should be pretty good Sunday night.
Wyatt is as close to an “Undertaker-like” character WWE has on either the blue or red rosters. Love him or hate him, he is so over with the fan base and should have been a world champion sooner rather than later. But now, with him in a larger main event picture on Monday nights, how does the unorthodox wrestle recreate main event drama that leads to a title run?
I suspect at some point, Wyatt would become the top contender for the Universal Title if Balor does win on Sunday night. The Demon King-Wyatt dynamic is one fans could get behind and could headline SummerSlam this year.
Wyatt is a combination of The Boogeyman, Kevin Sullivan and Raven. He is the voice WWE lost when CM Punk left for good. He is the “tweener” star the company and the business needs. And now that he has joined the team on Monday night, he has jumped into a pot of boiling water WWE did not want in the first place.
At some point, WWE must decide if it wants Wyatt to become the face of its red brand, but the company had better not make his stay at the top as short as the one he experienced on Tuesday nights.