How Adam Would Book... Bray Wyatt: Uncle Howdy

WrestleTalk

How Adam Would Book... Bray Wyatt: Uncle Howdy Come home, Bray... Adam Blampied provides his booking for Bray Wyatt's latest character, rounding out his trilogy of Bray Wyatt inspired booking videos as he books Bray Wyatt: Uncle Howdy.  How Adam Would Book... Cult Leader Bray Wyatt - https://youtu.be/zWOjXlujnHg  How Adam Would Book... The Fiend - https://youtu.be/bz5iArZMqfk  SUBSCRIBE TO partsFUNknown: https://bit.ly/2J2Hl6q TWITTER: https://twitter.com/partsfunknown FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/partsfunknown/ Buy wrestling merchandise here: https://www.wrestleshop.com/ Read more Feature content here on WrestleTalk.com: https://wrestletalk.com/features/

Transcript

00:00 Hello, I'm Adam Hailing from PartsFunKnown and this is how Adam would book Bray Wyatt and Uncle Howdy.

00:07 It's easy to do these when the bookings have already happened, isn't it? Now I get to look

00:14 back, cock a snook, push my smart-ass spectacles up my nose and say, "Wow, should have done this

00:22 and it's... or it really would have been easy to do that." It's very easy and I've somehow built a

00:28 career on it and most of what I've done amounts to saying, "Maybe you shouldn't have had your

00:33 wrestlers take a giant s*** in their own hands and then clap in front of everyone." And apparently

00:38 I'm clever. This time I am taking a storyline that has literally only just started, a storyline

00:44 being helmed by Bray Wyatt and also Triple H, one person who's very good at generating lore and

00:52 haunting imagery and the other who's provably very good at overseeing long-term storytelling

00:57 in NXT. I am taking their story and I'm saying, "Let me show you how it's done, lads.

01:05 Can I just do Katie Vick again?" So Bray Wyatt is back from outer space. He just walked in and

01:13 cut a promo with that sad look upon his face. We should have changed that stupid lock. We should

01:17 have made him leave his key if we knew for just one second he'd be back and bring his uncle with

01:22 him and his uncle was going to kill everyone and his uncle would be Ethan Hawke from the Black

01:25 Phone. It's lovely to have Bray back because simply put, you never know what you're going to

01:29 get with him and when a weekly wrestling show is often just the same Lego house built of the same

01:36 Lego bricks, promo, backstage segments, matches, anyone who adds a different kind of brick,

01:42 you keep those people around. At Extreme Rules, which will certainly go down in history as a

01:47 pay-per-view that happened, the biggest and best bit of that pay-per-view was saved for the end.

01:53 When the lights went out and all of Bray Wyatt's Funhouse characters appeared in knockoff cosplay

01:59 form like they were about to ask you for a fiver in Times Square, then Wyatt walked through a door

02:04 carrying his lantern wearing the white mask. Then he came out on Smackdown and surprised everyone

02:11 by basically conducting a one-man AA meeting, baring his soul in a strange kayfabe shoot,

02:20 talking about his own mental health, losing people in his life and turning an emotional

02:26 corner before being interrupted by the face of a being that would come to be known as Uncle Howdy,

02:33 or basically what would happen if the KFC Colonel went to Halloween as Slash. Honestly, this mask,

02:40 and look Bray is very good, but this is a lot closer to Oz from WCW than anyone cares to admit.

02:45 Someone has to say it. Uncle Howdy is the ghost of the man who sold the world and Bray Wyatt

02:52 killed the world. Bray sent someone away and is a shell of his former self. Bray is basically

02:58 feuding with his own dark thoughts, which is incredibly interesting, but how does it become

03:03 a wrestling match? And right now, I don't know. Some of the other stuff has been clearer. The

03:09 LA Knight stuff, especially. He made meek human Bray Wyatt mad. Bray lashed out. LA Knight doubled

03:15 down on being an LA knob. Bray went away somewhere in his eyes and awoke Uncle Howdy who killed LA

03:24 Knight with props. Who is Uncle Howdy? Where is this all going? Nervously, I say, let me have a go.

03:35 [MUSIC]

03:39 So like everything Bray has done, this is all recognizable horror tropes like Max Cady from

03:46 Cape Fear or Wrong Turn, like almost all of Rob Zombie's work right down to the Firefly family.

03:51 This version of Bray Wyatt is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a kind soul harboring a dark passenger,

03:57 a being that possesses him in times of crisis and makes him do dark and terrible things, albeit

04:03 efficiently. Unlike the version of Bray that would turn into the Fiend, the Mr. Rogers Bray,

04:09 there's purposefully no artifice or even hinted malevolence to the human Bray Wyatt here. And even

04:14 the Mr. Hyde is somehow even sillier than the Fiend. Look at him. He's a big panto wolf trying

04:22 to chew its way out of Bray. Now, right now, it's easy storytelling to understand. We see it in Split,

04:27 Hulk, me, myself, and Irene, the holy trinity of pop culture. In a wrestling context, it feels fun.

04:33 It's fresh, especially because it's still hard to see how it gels with the established format of,

04:40 you know, Bray Wyatt being a wrestler hired by a wrestling company wanting to wrestle for money.

04:45 That's always been the problem with Bray. Everyone loves the mind behind these things,

04:53 but it occasionally seems like Bray Wyatt would be better working for literally any other branch

04:58 of entertainment than a wrestling company because his gimmicks are fresh and cool,

05:01 but they often don't make sense in a live wrestling context. The booking having to sort

05:05 of bend over backwards to make the Fiend's invincibility, for example, actually interesting

05:11 to watch because, you know, it's not something we really want to talk about, but the Fiend doesn't

05:16 have a lot of good matches. They're horror gimmicks, and those things often require suggestion,

05:22 musical orchestration, careful framing, underexposure to maintain mystique, mood,

05:26 and atmosphere. I mean, it's no... like, the only time it's really all gone off as well as Bray

05:31 Wyatt is like sort of his potential is capable of is a Firefly Funhouse match because it's a

05:36 f***ing cinematic match. These gimmicks are incredibly fragile, and the line between scary

05:40 monster and derp clown is razor thin. It's no mean feat and no greater illustration of this point

05:46 that Bray has had two main gimmicks on the main roster, and for both, he won the Wrestling

05:51 Observer Award for best gimmick one year, and in a later year, won the award for the worst gimmick

05:56 for the same character. The Wyatt Family won best gimmick in 2013, and Bray Wyatt won worst in 2017,

06:02 the Fiend won best in 2019, and the worst in 2020. One year later, the Fiend won worst gimmick. The

06:10 gimmicks are so fun at first, but increasingly tricky to manage without booking yourself into

06:15 a corner. Bray creates monsters, and once you beat a monster, what are you left with? And that's going

06:21 to be the crux of this booking, the third in a trilogy I've done about Wyatt's characters,

06:26 something to sign off all of the spooky business and turn Bray into something he's never really

06:32 been before, a man. In that sense, the booking starts very similarly to how it did in real life,

06:38 in the build to Extreme Rules, but instead of being about a white rabbit, it's a series of

06:44 cryptic and cryptid clues leading fans to the phrase, "Come home." Do you get it? Because

06:50 Bray's coming home to WWE. Do you get it? At Extreme Rules, the lights go down, but instead

06:56 of all the characters appearing, Bray walks out by himself, holding the lantern. No mask,

07:02 just him and the lantern. Bray Wyatt has come home. On SmackDown, like in real life,

07:08 Bray talks about his time away and why he's come back. He felt himself fall apart. It took losing

07:16 some of the people closest to him to realize that he was hiding behind all of these masks that he

07:23 wears. "The truth is," says Bray, "I'm scared. Like, we're all scared. Scared of who I am.

07:31 Scared of what I'm capable of. The love and cruelty that resides inside me, inside all of us.

07:38 I've tried to bury the wolf inside me, but it didn't die. It just became separate. I went to

07:43 a different place. A place in the woods. That wasn't my home. Wrestling is my home. It's what

07:51 I know best. It's the only thing I know. The only thing that my family has ever known. I spent so

07:58 long wearing all these different faces that you've never seen the real me. My name is Wyndham

08:04 Rotunda. I am a wrestler. My father was a wrestler who taught me to chase my dreams,

08:10 because the only certain things in life were death and taxes. My grandfather was a wrestler

08:17 who stepped up to Bruno Sammartino and taught me what you can win when you lose. My uncle was a

08:23 wrestler who taught me what rode upon a pale horse. My brother is a wrestler who taught me to believe.

08:31 My name is Wyndham Rotunda. My name is Bray Wyatt. This is my home, and I'm back.

08:40 Bray is going clean. He's setting aside the masks, trying to overcome his past obsessions,

08:46 his past gimmicks. The Wyatt family was his attempt at power. The Fiend was his attempt at war. Bray

08:54 Wyatt, now, is his attempt at peace. Certain things in his life have made him realise that

09:01 none of us may have as long as we think. So if I'm back, I want you to see the real me. The real

09:18 home. Bray looks confused, drops the mic, and leaves. See, something's wrong in Bray Wyatt,

09:25 but please, no more supernatural bollocks. No magical powers, because they're not scary.

09:30 They've never been scary. Honestly, this Uncle Howdy mask, this is not scary. Flickering

09:35 titantrons aren't scary. I'll tell you what's scary, the look on Bray's face when he's made

09:39 up his mind to f***ing kill LA Knight. That's the Bray we get for a while. Someone incredibly kind

09:46 in backstage interviews, incredibly genuine. He wrestles matches, shaking hands with his

09:51 opponents before the bout, but after you push him too far, he disappears and becomes something else,

09:58 something savage. Because ultimately, that is a subtler, admittedly more mundane way to frame

10:05 Bray Wyatt, but also has a lot more for fans to actually grapple with in terms of wrestling

10:10 presentation. Not so much, "Oh, this is a Fiend match, so it has to take place in a red light."

10:15 And it has to have him no-selling the entire thing, which gets really f***ing boring. Instead,

10:22 the match starts normally with the fans leaning in and wondering when the change is going to happen.

10:29 When Bray will just stop, go to his other place, his place in the woods, and then explode into the

10:35 match like a bulldozer, snap the neck of his opponent and crush them. That's fine for a while.

10:41 That's a fun game because Bray can have these then short-lived feuds with mid-carders like

10:47 LA Knight, like Drew Gulak, like Ricochet, people who are good at selling for Bray when he's in

10:54 truck mode. Because Bray Wyatt is f***ing truck, just turning Ricochet inside out once he's lost

11:00 it. I think that'd be a really good use of it. In the meantime, running across all these micro

11:05 feuds is the fact that Bray is being haunted. Notes are being left for him, daubed in what

11:10 appears to be blood on the walls of his locker room. Notes scribbled inside sheep masks,

11:16 the same words, "Come home." His first proper feud is against Karrion Kross. He sees Kross

11:22 as someone who is very much like him, someone who confused fear with respect, someone who hurts

11:29 because he hurts. Kross dismisses Bray as the former Bray Wyatt, a Bray Wyatt who's lost his

11:35 edge. He wants to fight the proper face of fear. Bray tells him, "You're searching for something

11:42 in the trees. Walk carefully or you may find it." A match between the two is set for the Royal Rumble,

11:48 but before the pay-per-view, Bray is set to wrestle a local competitor squash match. Before

11:53 the match starts, the competitor says into the mic, "Bray, Uncle Howdy says come home." Bray

12:00 just freezes, disappears into himself, stands there long enough for Karrion Kross to run down

12:06 to the ring and knock him out with the forearm to the back of Bray's head. The local competitor

12:10 dons a sheep mask and sits cross-legged next to Bray. At the Rumble, Wyatt is taken to the brink

12:17 by Karrion Kross, but he tries to keep his cool. That's the story of the match. Wyatt is going to

12:22 win by proving that Kross can't get under his skin because that is all the power that Kross has,

12:29 fear. Bray is choosing another way. At least he's trying to, and it works until the finish

12:35 of the match, which sees multiple people jump over the guardrail in sheep masks and ragged clothes.

12:40 One last figure hops the guardrail. That member of the Wyatt family is holding

12:44 the Fiend mask, and Bray sees it, snaps, and just goes wild. He rips the Fiend mask off the guy who

12:53 smiles at him and says, "Uncle Howdy says, 'Come home.'" Before Bray snaps his neck, he grabs his

13:01 glass lantern from ringside and he runs at Karrion Kross with it, who ducks and Bray accidentally

13:06 smashes Scarlett with it. Bray is horrified at himself, and he just walks away, walks away from

13:13 the entire match. On SmackDown, Bray talks to the audience and apologizes. "I thought

13:17 I could have a fresh start. I thought I could make a new home for myself,

13:21 but I see now there's only one way that happens. I know who Uncle Howdy is. I know you're watching.

13:29 Next week, I'll make sure they let you in." The next week, Bray takes to the ring,

13:36 and this next segment takes place in silence. Bray stands in the ring, holds his arms out,

13:41 and waits. The lights go down, and a figure emerges from the top of the ramp. The figure

13:47 is wearing a white mask, similar to the mask that Bray first wore at Extreme Rules. They walk down

13:52 to the ring, and they are carrying the shattered lantern. They walk to the ring. The only light

13:59 is the light of the lantern. The figure offers the lantern to Bray. Bray shakes his head,

14:05 refuses it. The figure then gestures. The lights come up, and Bray is surrounded in the ring by a

14:14 horde of backwards cultists, all of them looking like former members of the Wyatt family who beat

14:20 the ever-loving s*** out of him as the figure in the mask watches. They leave Bray in a bloody heap,

14:28 and then Karrion Kross comes down and puts Bray in the cross jacket, retribution for what he did

14:32 to Scarlett. A cage match between Bray Wyatt and Karrion Kross is set for SmackDown the next week.

14:38 Backstage, Bray walks past Alexa Bliss, who is visiting from Raw specifically to see him.

14:46 She stops and says, "Hi, Bray. It's been a while. I just wanted to say good luck tonight. I don't

14:52 like seeing you like this." Bray stops her. "Everything that happened a while back, Alexa,

14:58 I'm sorry. That was..." And Alexa stops him. "We both made choices. That's what we do. We just...

15:07 We make choices as best we can." There's a cage match in the main event of SmackDown during which

15:12 Kross murders Bray Wyatt because Bray is barely putting up a fight. He's so remorseful over what

15:19 he's done. Scarlett is telling Kross to keep hitting him. "Please, please hit me. Kill it.

15:26 Take it from me and kill it." Scarlett tries to get involved when Alexa runs down to fight her off.

15:31 Kross reaches through the cage door, grabs Alexa, pulls her into the ring, pushes her down, and that

15:37 is when Bray snaps, goes on a rampage, repeatedly smashing Kross's face into the cage wall over and

15:45 over and over and over and over. The lights go down, come back up. Alexa is gone, and Uncle Howdy

15:53 stands at the corner of the cage holding out the Fiend mask to Bray. Wyatt stands. He looks at it.

16:02 He looks out to the crowd. If I know wrestling fans, they will cheer for him to put it on.

16:08 That's what they'll want because ultimately we want what we know, and it's hard to let go

16:15 of what we know. They will boo him when ultimately Bray refuses. He drops the mask to the ground,

16:21 and then Kross puts him in the Kross jacket, and Bray passes out. Cage raises. Kross leaves,

16:26 winning the feud. Uncle Howdy sits cross-legged next to Bray's body, taking the Fiend mask

16:32 in his hand. Now, you'll probably notice that there's a tiny bit of magic bollocks in here,

16:38 but it has been kept to a minimum. Some light teleportation, sort of like physical,

16:43 understandable stuff, and that's by design because it's not a story about supernatural demons. It's,

16:49 he says pretentiously, about psychological ones and a man struggling to escape the misdeeds of

16:57 his past. Bray offers to meet Uncle Howdy at Elimination Chamber. No more masks because Bray

17:03 says, "I don't want to run. I don't want to fight. I just want to talk." At Elimination Chamber,

17:11 Bray stands face-to-face with Uncle Howdy. He offers Bray the lantern. Bray says, "No." Uncle

17:17 Howdy offers Bray the Fiend mask. Bray says, "No." Uncle Howdy looks to the tron. On the screen,

17:23 plays grainy footage of two men wrestling a tag match in FCW, intercut with promos from the two

17:30 of them, the Rotundo brothers. Uncle Howdy removes his mask to reveal Bo Dallas. He offers the mask

17:39 to Bray and says, "Brother, come home." Bray shakes his head. Bo says, "You can't make a family,

17:50 then burn it down when it suits you. We won't let you." The Backwoods cultists once again storm the

17:56 ring, surround Bray. These are the unseen members of the Wyatt family, the one that joined them in

18:00 the woods, in those segments, all those years ago. Bo repeats, "Come home." Bray responds,

18:07 "I am home." They attack, once again leaving Bray bloody, laying. Bo sits cross-legged next to him.

18:16 "There's a monster in you, brother. I found mine. We'll find yours. We have all the time in the

18:23 world." Bo, like a true little brother, has emulated his older brother to find meaning in his life. He

18:29 feels abandoned. He wants Bray to join him, thinks that this is what gives Bray power, not realising

18:36 or refusing to realise that actually he's asking his brother to be weak again. Bo challenges Bray

18:43 to a match at WrestleMate, but Bray refuses. "I won't fight you, little brother. We don't have

18:48 to go backwards. We don't have to repeat history. We can make something new together." "All my life,"

18:54 says Bo, "you've left me behind, left me to fend for myself. Now I have the kind of power that you

19:00 are afraid to have. You're the weak one. Come home. Be loved once again." And Bray says,

19:09 "I don't need your love. I don't need your forgiveness. But I am sorry." He turns around,

19:15 offers Bo his back. Bo puts his Uncle Howdy mask back on, takes a hammer from his jacket,

19:20 and hits his brother in the head with it. He sits cross-legged next to the fallen body of his

19:25 brother. "We have all the time in the world." In the meantime, Bray is being haunted by this

19:33 Fiend mask. He keeps finding it backstage. At one point, he sits in the dark and says that he can

19:38 hear the mask talking to him. The mask tells him to let him in one more time. "It'll be so easy.

19:46 Then all the problems go away forever." A few weeks out from WrestleMania, Bray is wrestling

19:53 a match when the TitanTron starts to play home video footage of two young boys, two brothers,

19:59 playing together. The footage then cuts to the two boys and their father, Mike Rotunda, the former

20:04 IRS. It then cuts to Blair Witch-style camera footage set deep in the trees. Their father,

20:11 Mike Rotunda, has been tied to a tree and beaten. The family, the Wyatt family, stand around him.

20:19 Bray loses his mind, destroys the person he's wrestling. Next snap, Sister Abigail,

20:25 mandible claw. He takes the mic. "I accept." Uncle Howdy comes out. Either way at WrestleMania,

20:33 it's going to be a homecoming. "If I beat you, you take your rightful place at the head of this

20:40 Wyatt family." Bray says, "But if I beat you, you have to let me help you." Bray keeps getting

20:47 attacked by Bo and the family, and the sheer numbers of them means that every single time

20:50 Bray is taken apart and every single time Bo leaves the Fiend mask next to Bray's body. Bo

20:56 tells him, "There's only one way to beat me. There's only one way." At WrestleMania, it is

21:04 brother versus brother, mental health support system on the line. Before the match, backstage,

21:10 Bray sits with the Fiend mask in his hands. When he's interrupted, approached by Eric Rowan. Rowan

21:17 is dressed in a suit. He wanted to wish Bray good luck after everything. Bray says, "For putting you

21:26 through the Wyatt family, I just wanted to say I'm really sorry." Eric says, "I'm doing fine

21:37 these days. I've cleared through some of the cobwebs. I don't really know if I forgive you

21:44 for what happened. I'm not really sure it matters." If you do better, that's what he would

21:52 want anyway. He hands Bray a piece of cloth, a stained white vest. "Make him proud," says Eric.

22:00 "Make yourself proud." The match takes place. Bray comes down to the ring with the vest in his hands

22:06 and he drapes it across the turnbuckle in one corner. Bo brings the Fiend mask with him, places

22:11 it on the opposite turnbuckle. Yes, this is all a bit heavy handed in terms of the visual symbolism.

22:17 Shut up, though. It's my story. Bray and Bo wrestle, and every turn, the family members at

22:23 ringside keep helping Bo get back in control. Bray keeps staring at the Fiend mask. Later in the match,

22:29 the ref goes down and all the family members get into the ring, forming a line between Bo

22:34 and Bray, with Bray backed into the corner with the Fiend mask. He takes it, waits,

22:43 finally puts it on. He finally lets the Fiend in. All that psychological rage, all that savagery,

22:50 all that ability to dismiss pain, to bury pain. He lays waste to the family members until all

22:57 that's left is Bo. He places his hands around Bo's head, ready to snap his neck, and he looks

23:02 across the ring at the vest. He stops. He rips the mask from his head, throws it into the crowd.

23:09 The mask is gone, eaten by the WWE fans, consumed by the people who admittedly both want him to

23:16 wear it because it's familiar, but also wants Bray, the character, hopefully at this point in the

23:22 story, to get better. Bo takes the hammer, looks at Bray and says, "You could have beaten me."

23:29 Bray says, "I have beaten you." And Bray turns his back once again to Bo. Bo swings it in with

23:37 the hammer. Bray ducks, plants Bo with the Sister Abigail. One, two, three. Bray wins.

23:45 The family disbands. The Fiend is gone. All the loose strings, all of Bray's backstory leading

23:51 to this moment where he wins as a man, not a monster. And from there, the story is Bray and

23:58 Bo working together. Bray trying to deprogram Bo, deprogram all the former Wyatt family members,

24:04 because that is the best way that Bray can find this redemption he's looking for, to actually

24:08 seek people out and make amends. The two brothers form a team, finding a new purpose together.

24:17 In some ways, taking it back to the beginning, and in some ways, forging a new one.

24:22 That is how I would book Bray Wyatt ridding himself of monsters and finally becoming a man.

24:31 What do you think? Let me know in the comments. Let me know what you'd like me to book. Well,

24:35 you can't let me know what you'd like me to book next month, because it's going to be the Rumble.

24:38 The Royal Rumble. I love booking Royal Rumbles. Huzzah. I will see you next month for that.

24:44 Have a Merry Christmas, everyone. Happy holidays. And get on board. That's no Rolls Barred.

24:50 Jam that jam. Ha ha. Happy New Year, everyone.

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