Bray Wyatt is an up-and-coming young wrestler on the NXT roster. While most of the guys on NXT are muscular, gorgeous, and Baby-Facey, Wyatt is decidedly old-school Heel. He is massive, sadistic, bearded, and creepy. He calls himself the “Devourer of Worlds” and he is fantastic and frightening on the mic.
His character was first named “Windham Rotunda”, the coolest tribute-to-old-school-rasslin’ name ever. Then they called him “Husky Harris” because he is fat, and now he is “Bray Wyatt” the “Devourer of Worlds.” He played a cruel, mysterious Cajun like the villain in Cape Fear. Now he is more of a serial killer slash cult leader slash butcher, looking more like Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Like any Heel, Bray is utterly dominant in the ring, demolishing all of his prey. But this article focuses on another aspect of his complex personality: his loving and cuddling side.
After Bray Wyatt defeats and subdues his opponents, he often spends time being affectionate and intimate with them, laying on them and cuddling their limp bodies.
Whatever Wyatt may lack in shirtless sex appeal, he more than compensates for in gay gestures that are loaded with sexual innuendo. Wyatt’s finishing move is actually a series of homo-erotic positions and actions, as detailed below:
1. He first splashes the victim in the corner of the ring with his belly, pressing against the man, breathing on him and hugging/crushing him.
2. One arm around the man’s waist, he forces his limp opponent to Tango with him across the ring, and it’s made very clear that Wyatt is leading the dance.
3. He dips his dance partner and plants a “Kiss of Death” on the other dude’s forehead (not many wrestlers incorporate guy-on-guy kissing in their move-set.)
4. He violently flips the ragdoll over his body and slams his face onto the mat, a move which is oddly known as the “Sister Abigail” (I’m not sure why this move has such a strange name — do you have any idea? All I could discern is that “Sister Abigail” was a nun from a creepy 2009 horror film called “Orphan.“)
5. He mounts the defeated man, pins him and spoons against him, hugging the man’s head and caressing his hair as the ref yells at him to get off.
Here is a 12-second YouTube clip showing Wyatt performing this devastating (yet loving) finishing maneuver on jobber Aiden English.
So why does the vicious, hyper-masculine “Devourer of Worlds” perform these homo-erotic and loving gestures on his helpless victims? Obviously he is trying to creep out the heterosexuals in the audience, playing off their feelings of Gay Panic as he fondles and molests his boy toys and implies that he might just rape them.
He also is meant to be a Cult Leader, forever trying to recruit new zombies. Perhaps his loving gestures are an invitation to the other wrestler to join his “family.” Maybe Wyatt is trying to woo the other wrestler to be submissive to him and worship him.
But I think there is another layer to the Bray Wyatt personality — he is portrayed as craving the human touch with another man. In contrast to oddball Wyatt, the other NXT wrestlers are handsome and well-adjusted. They enter into healthy, successful homo-social relationships with one another. They partner up in Tag Teams and warmly embrace each other after each victory. Yet we see creepy Bray Wyatt left out in the cold and none of the other studs want to be his friend.
Perhaps the Bray Wyatt character is meant to depict what happens to a young male if he is denied the human touch — prevented from getting any Bro Hugs. Perhaps Wyatt’s sadistic cruelty is a reference to the young misfits who we often hear about resorting to tragic acts of suicidal violence because they were picked on or ostracized at school. Bray Wyatt’s actions send the message that if a man cannot experience a connection with other men, he will become a strange monster and will forever crave the human touch — will get his lovin’ by force if necessary.
Bray in fact has two disciples in his “family”: Rowan (the bald zombie) and Harper (with the long black beard.) They follow him around like baby chicks, and he utterly owns and controls them. When their Master is at work in the ring, the two followers watch from ringside with their mouths hanging open, drooling all over themselves in hungry anticipation.
But Bray Wyatt does not seem to be satisfied with these zombies as his mates. He does not seek their affection. They’re too easily controlled by him, too helpless to be a challenge. Instead, Wyatt treats them like dogs (kicking them out of the way if necessary) and focuses his affections on whatever more-handsome, more-desirable opponent he has in the ring.
Pro wrestling teaches us that the ideal relationship is the male-male homo-social relationship. However, Bray Wyatt reminds us that this Bromance won’t work with just any misfit or goon.
To be successful, the homo-social pairing must be with a desirable male, a stud, a leader, a powerful man full of self-esteem and agency who will benefit you and cause other males to be envious of your status.
THAT is what Bray Wyatt is trying so clumsily to achieve (what many of us are trying so clumsily to achieve) — a positive male-male relationship. So he gropes and grinds against every beefcake that gets in the ring with him.
His most ambitious effort to land a handsome life partner has been with Chris Jericho.
Jericho willingly plays along, getting in the ring shirtless and exposed with the big monster, subjecting himself to the creepy humiliation.
