Minus-Star Match Reviews: Bray Wyatt vs. Randy Orton – WWE WrestleMania 33

Don’t let the above happy Wyatt picture fool you; this match was nothing to smile at.

Once upon a time Bray Wyatt was heralded as a new version of the Undertaker. He had a unique gimmick, stood out from the crowd, and captivated audiences with his promos and magnetism.

Then WWE creative came along and ruined everything.

Wyatt may have been the wrestling equivalent of a brilliant actor but he was stuck performing in a place where bad scripts and clueless studio executives were the norm. Wyatt’s potential as a new monster or ‘new face of fear’ never materialized in a big way. Worse, all of his big talk tended to lead to overhyped and underwhelming matches, which is what we’re revisiting today.

The Story

This match was the conclusion of a storyline that started almost eight months earlier. Wyatt confronted Orton on SmackDown shortly after Orton’s famous ‘bust-my-head-open-the-hard-way’ match with Brock Lesnar soon the two began fighting. For several weeks Orton tried to beat Wyatt only for Luke Harper to interfere on Wyatt’s behalf. Eventually, Orton reasoned that “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” and aligned himself with Bray and Harper to create a new Wyatt Family.

Then…things got weird.

It turns out that this alliance all a ruse. In a weird vignette, Orton found Wyatt’s swamp hut which also purported to have ‘Sister Abigail’ interred beneath it. Then he set the house on fire, effectively committing arson, while Wyatt howled and wailed in anguish. And somehow this makes Orton the good guy?

Not only did the storyline behind this match make character alignment confusing, but it was also hard to boo Bray Wyatt at all around this time. A month earlier, Wyatt won the WWE Championship in an Elimination Chamber. He was over with the crowd once again and many people saw that win as a negation of the bad booking he had endured for years.

So while Orton stood a good chance of winning because he had more momentum going into the match, he still had a big challenge in Wyatt, who was going to be out for revenge for Orton’s arson.

The Match

This took place on April 2, 2017. It was rated *1/2 out of five by the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and voted Worst Match of the Year by that readership.

Wyatt comes out first and has his usual spectacular entrance. Conversely, Orton’s entrance is much simpler, save for the really bad CGI slithering serpent that follows him down the entrance ramp. They should’ve rethought that image because from a distance is looks like Orton is slowly being chased by a giant sperm.

The bell rings and Orton rushes Wyatt with mounted punches. Orton ducks a clothesline and lands a drop toehold. He followed with a snap powerslam and goes for an RKO but Wyatt escapes to ringside. Orton chases him down and sends him back in but Wyatt cuts him off with an uppercut. Wyatt drops Orton with a running head-butt and teases his finisher…when suddenly the camera cuts to a top-down angle revealing a projection of maggots onto the ring. The referee bails, Orton barely registers it, Wyatt doesn’t move, the crowd groans, and all the commentators can muster is a bewildered “what the…”.

Orton casually rolls to ringside as Wyatt poses in the ring. After some stalling both guys block each other’s finisher and Wyatt hits a crossbody block. Wyatt lands a forearm club to Orton on the apron and after more stalling he hits a corner clothesline. He teases another finisher but the lights go out again. This time it’s earthworms. Again the crowd groans and the commentators put on the phoniest disgust they possibly could.

Wyatt lands mounted punches and forearms but Orton tries another RKO. Wyatt counters with an uranage and a senton for two. Orton counters another Sister Abigail with a schoolboy roll-up for two and Wyatt hits a clothesline. Orton bails again and Wyatt charges at him but Orton kicks him in the gut. Orton tries capitalizing but Wyatt drives him into the apron back-first and then hits Sister Abigail against the barricade.

Wyatt tosses Orton into the ring but Orton just rolls back out. Wyatt gets a big running start around the ring but Orton counters with an RKO. After a long recovery segment Orton rolls Wyatt into the ring and covers for a near-fall. There’s more stalling and inaction and then Orton teases a punt kick. He misses and Wyatt tries his finish again. Orton fights out and lands his back-to-back backbreaker. That’s followed by a hanging DDT and another RKO attempt. Wyatt counters and connects with Sister Abigail for a near-fall. Wyatt does the crab walk…and the lights dim as we get a third display of vermin, this time cockroaches, projected onto the mat. This distracts Wyatt long enough for Orton to recover, land another RKO, and get the three-count to win the title.

Winner and NEW WWE Champion after 10:30: Randy Orton

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ8-SCikojA

Review

What little faith I had left in WWE’s willingness to make something interesting out of Bray Wyatt died with this match. Instead of taking lessons from the best of Undertaker’s work they took from the worst of Kane’s. They didn’t make Wyatt scary or menacing; they made him absurd. They took the idea that Wyatt is “out there” to the extreme by making him into something inexplicable. The match barely had any flow from one spot to the next. The chemistry between the two wrestlers involved was threadbare. The story barely made any sense. They moved at a glacial pace with about three minutes’ worth of actual story stretched over more than ten. The ending was deflating and didn’t really help anyone as it cut Wyatt’s momentum from underneath and benefit Orton all that much anyway.

As for the projection gimmick, it was stupid and unentertaining. It was never explained who was doing it or who was supposed to actually benefit from it. If the point was for this to be some kind of witchcraft on Wyatt’s part then it didn’t do anything as Orton never really reacted to it. If it was meant to be a surprise from Orton to Wyatt then that didn’t work either as Wyatt didn’t slow down all that much. It was just shock for its own sake and just served to confuse the fans. While creative and outside-the-box thinking is a good thing nine times out of ten it wasn’t the case here. This was WWE’s attempt at reinventing the wheel and they missed the mark substantially.

Final Rating: -*

This was a bad match. It killed the crowd, people groaned at the sight of Vince McMahon and Kevin Dunn’s bad production ideas, and it got people talking for all the wrong reasons. The bad creative here overshadowed whatever physical display was going on in the ring and served to put a bad taste in fan’s mouths. While Orton was able to bounce back from something as bad as this, Wyatt was not. He continued to flounder and run on a treadmill, forever talking a big game but never backing it up in the ring or with results.

It’s a shame that Vince McMahon’s departure didn’t come much sooner; if it did then there’s a chance Bray Wyatt would’ve been booked differently and had more success.

Thanks for reading.