Bray Wyatt's very first live promo in WWE saw him take out R-Truth and then preach to the crowd with his now-familiar slew of metaphors and cryptic messages. The crowd starts out heckling him with chants of "WHAT?!" during every pause. By the end, however, he gets a standing ovation. He won over the crowd with one promo. Not only one promo, but his very first.
His match with The Undertaker at WrestleMania 31. Sure he lost, but it didn't stop it from being amazing. And he did the whole match with a sprained ankle. It helped this followed the year after Brock Lesnar finally defeating the Undertaker's winning streak, leaving at least some suspense that Wyatt could actually win.
This tag match that Bray and Roman Reigns had a week after Wrestlemania 32, because for the first time, we got a glimpse of Bray Wyatt as a face. And the crowd was gaga for it the whole time.
The end also had a cool moment. Bray hits Alberto Del Rio with Sister Abigail and covers for the pin. As the referee starts the count, Sheamus comes in to try and break it up, but Bray sees him coming, points at Sheamus finger gun style...and Reigns spears him, securing the victory. It's almost as if Bray telepathically commanded Roman to save him...which would explain the confused look Reigns had afterward.
Survivor Series 2016: Bray scores the winning pin for Team SmackDown Live after nailing Roman Reigns with Sister Abigail. Although a little credit is due to Randy Orton for taking a spear from Roman and saving Bray in the process. Which then swings the credit back towards Bray for successfully turning Orton to join the Wyatt Family in the first place.
TLC 2016: Bray finally scores his first championship in WWE after over three years, winning the Smackdown Tag Team Championship with Randy Orton in a rather dominant victory over former champs Heath Slater and Rhyno.
At Elimination Chamber 2017, Bray survives the titular match for the first time and eliminates John Cena and AJ Styles (after countering a Phenomenal Forearm into a Sister Abigail) to become WWE Champion for the first time. Many have compared this to Chris Jericho defeating "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and The Rock in the same night.
"The Era of Wyatt" continues two days later in grand fashion. After kicking off Smackdown with a scintillating Badass Boastof a promo, Wyatt finds himself going up against bothJohn Cena and AJ Styles, both men with a legitimate gripe and a legitimate claim to a rematch, thus resulting in a Triple Threat main event for the WWE World Title...just AFTER taking an hellacious beatdown from erstwhile "brother" Luke Harper. Despite that assault, a Styles splash-and-crash through the announce table, and TWO AAs, Bray still comes away with the WWE World Championship by pinning Cena clean...AGAIN.
And if that wasn't enough...as Wyatt revels in retaining the championship, Royal Rumble winner and Wyatt Family member Randy Orton saunters down to the ring, the crowd hushed in anticipation as if expecting Orton to drop Wyatt with an RKO and declare his true intentions for the WWE World Title. He then declares...that as he is the "servant" to Bray's "master", he will NOT fight him at WrestleMania, and the crowd and the announcers are absolutely stunned as Bray smiles with malicious glee and declares that Randy has finally earned the "keys to the kingdom." So, within the span of three days, Bray Wyatt has finally won the WWE World Championship, firmly cemented himself at a level above AJ Styles and John Cena, having eliminated both men to win the title and then overcomes both of them again a mere two days later, and...AND had Randy Orton sufficiently cowed under the shroud of The Wyatt Family.
The Firefly Funhouse series is probably one of the most intriguing and engaging stories the WWE has ever written. It's portrayed as a Mr Roger's style kid's show but with some very creepy and unsettling overtones. Bray's acting is what really sells it, though. He acts like an excitable kid's show host, but he makes it clear that he's still the same Bray inside.
His attack onMick Foley during the Raw Reunion show, using Foley's own Mandible Claw on him. Few people can say they've gotten the best of Mrs. Foley's Baby Boy. Not only that, but he has since claimed the Mandible Claw as his own, using it to defeat Finn Bálor at SummerSlam in 2019.
At 2019's SummerSlam, we finally came face-to-face with The Fiend. His entrance opened with his new theme, a metal remix of "Broken Out in Love", with The Fiend carrying a lantern, wrapped around which was a model of Bray Wyatt's severed head with the eyes stitched shut and the mouth serving as the opening for the lamp itself. Bray has officially outdone himself and achieved a new level of creepiness.
This speaks nothing of the match where the Fiend absolutely destroys Balor for a good while before Finn gets in a few good moves, but can't stop the more aggressive persona of Wyatt, who ultimately nearly suffocates the Extraordinary Man Who Does Extraordinary Things with a Mandible Claw. Keep in mind, this is the same Balor who, seven months ago, took Brock fuckin' Lesnar to his limits. Bray also showed off his talent by evolving his in-ring technique to match the character- it's still recognisable as Bray Wyatt's wrestling style, but even more brutal, savage and aggressive than before, fitting for The Fiend's Wrestling Monster character.
The crowd was on Bray's side from the moment Balor's music ended. Every crowd chant from the end of Bray's entrance onwards was either "Holy shit!" "Let him in!" "Yowie wowie!" or "This is/That was awesome!" The best part about it is Finn's reaction to it; it's essentially the look that The Ascension had when he first debuted his Demon King warpaint on them! Old Bray, eat your heart out!
After the match, Corey Graves compares the Fiend to The Undertaker, saying that Wyatt's ability to intimidate is on level with, if not surpassing the Deadman. To imply he may be even more intimidating than one of the greatest of all time? That says a lot about the character.
The Fiend is quickly becoming a huge thing in the wrestling fandom, with lots of people talking about it and creating art and so much more of the character. Keep in mind, this character debuted the same night Seth Rollins was given his official coronation as one of the faces of WWE, and during the rise of AEW. To be so highly talked about really speaks volumes about how larger-than-life Bray has become with the Fiend.
Adding onto that, WWE's marketing team has been churning out new Bray merchandise like crazy. Shirts, gloves, masks, puppets... they even made what is essentially a Loot Box for him, and it sold out in three hours!
Speaking of The Fiend and the Firefly Funhouse, how about the fact that "YOWIE WOWIE" is actually a popular catchphrase, and not in an ironic So Bad, It's Good sense encompassing overly-childish Narm, but as an iconic marker of the whole character's inherent dissonance? That's an achievement in getting a line over on par with The Rock.
Come the WWE Draft in November, Wyatt was drafted fourth overall, and was Smackdown's second pick. And by Smackdown, we mean that he's such a hot commodity that the Fox network picked him up.
YMMV, but the fact that The Fiend is so heavily featured in the new Smackdown intro could be considered this.
Crown Jewel 2019: The Fiend gets another opportunity against Universal Champion Seth Rollins in a Falls Count Anywhere match. Adding on top of that, the match could not be stopped under any circumstance, only with a pinfall. The Fiend withstood eight Curb Stomps, with Rollins unable to put Wyatt away. Hell, around the third stomp, the Fiend just stood back up like it was nothing! When that wasn't enough, Rollins superkicked the Fiend off the stage into electrical equipment below, which exploded. And it didn't even faze him, as he got up and took advantage of a blinded Rollins to apply the Mandible Claw, land the Sister Abigail, and pin him. Ladies and gentlemen, your new Universal Champion, "The Fiend" Bray Wyatt! The gravity of the situation was punctuated with an appropriately awesome quote by Corey Graves (itself apparently paraphrased from the Tagline of Dawn of the Dead (1978)):
Graves: When there's no more room in Hell, The Fiend shall rule the Earth.
Wrestlemania 36 has Wyatt swiftly and ruthlessly crush the most over hyped, over privileged, and overrated talent in WWE, deconstructing every single thing about John Cena until he literally vanishes out of existence.
On October 9, 2020, The Fiend faced Kevin Owens. It ends with The Fiend locking in the Mandible Claw. Owens counters it into the Stunner, only for The Fiend to completely ignore it and keep the Mandible Claw locked in until Owens passes out.
On December 7, 2020, Randy Orton hit Wyatt with the RKO and tried to pin him. Before the referee could count to three, the lights go out for a few seconds. When they come back on, Wyatt has been replaced by the Fiend, who immediately takes Orton out with the Mandible Claw.
On December 14, 2020, Orton ambushes Wyatt, knocks him out, throws him into a wooden crate, and sets it on fire. As he is celebrating, the Fiend bursts out of the flames and takes him down with the Mandible Claw again.
Bray Wyatt, after over a year off of his release from the company, makes his dramatic return at the end of Extreme Rules 2022. The cheers from the crowd were on the level of legends returning, he has returned home.
Bray: I'm here! (blows out the light in his lantern)
Ultimately, and maybe most importantly of all, the very career of Windham Rotunda may be one of the single most impressive accomplishments in wrestling history. In his entirely too short 36 years, only ten of which were spent with his most iconic character, the man behind Bray Wyatt was able to carve out such an irreplaceable legacy for himself, despite a decade of start-stop booking and suspect-at-best decisions from WWE's hierarchy and writing staff, that the day his creative mind left the world became a day of mourning for literally everyone in the industry, including worldwide names like John Cena and Dwayne Johnson. There are those in wrestling who spend twice that time trying to accomplish half as much and never succeed, and he did it in the face of every obstacle and reversal a wrestler in his position could imagine. More than anything else, despite everything else, Windham Lawrence Rotunda left this world beloved. Windham Lawrence Rotunda left this world, in every sense of the word, a modern-day folk hero. And, at the end of everything, Windham Lawrence Rotunda truly, truly, had the whole world in his hands.
saw him take out R-Truth and then preach to the crowd with his now-familiar slew of metaphors and cryptic messages. The crowd starts out heckling him with chants of "WHAT?!" during every pause. By the end, however, he gets a standing ovation. He won over the crowd with one promo. Not only one promo, but his very first.