After being absent from WWE programming for several months, Bray Wyatt returned to the company at Saturday’s Starrcade event in Cincinnati. Dating back to the early days of WWE’s revamped NXT developmental brand in 2012, Wyatt has always seemed to share a special connection with wrestling fans. From a storytelling perspective, that makes perfect sense, as Wyatt’s character is that of a charismatic cult leader capable of talking anyone into just about anything. The fact that he has an extremely cool entrance certainly doesn’t hurt.
Wyatt of course started out leading a literal cult on WWE TV, that being The Wyatt Family. The primary members of that family were Luke Harper and Erick Rowan, who’ve since went on to further tag team success as The Bludgeon Brothers, prior to Rowan sustaining an injury that put him out of action. The Wyatt Family also introduced the WWE to Braun Strowman, the man now referred to as The Monster Among Men. Strowman is now one of the most popular performers in the company, although he’s also currently out with an injury.
While Wyatt no longer leads his “family,” he recently found another true companion in “Woken” Matt Hardy. The two won the Raw tag team championships in April at the Greatest Royal Rumble show in Saudi Arabia, then would go on to drop the titles to The B-Team at July’s Extreme Rules. Unfortunately, Hardy has been off TV since losing their title rematch, due to mounting injuries, which Matt has hinted might lead to his retirement. Wyatt has also been gone from WWE since August, but resurfaced in unexpected fashion last night at Starrcade. Below are some images of his return, via Twitter user @johncenaAm.
While Starrcade - named after the pay-per-view WCW used to consider its equivalent to WWE’s WrestleMania - wasn’t televised live, a special one-hour look at the show will be presented tonight on the WWE Network. Why they couldn’t just broadcast the whole thing is unclear, especially given recent reports that WWE was looking to add additional live events to its streaming service in order to make the line-up more enticing for new subscribers. It’s unknown whether Wyatt’s return will be shown as part of this abridged version of Starrcade.
It’s also unclear if Wyatt returning at Starrcade will be followed by a return to Raw on Monday night. Wyatt isn’t known to be injured currently, so it wouldn’t really make sense for WWE to continue to not include him in storylines. He does seem poised to return as a face, due to his No DQ match against Baron Corbin last night, the heel authority figure running Raw under the charge of Stephanie McMahon. Hopefully Wyatt and his “fireflies” head back to TV, sooner rather than later.
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Source: @johncenaAm
