Brooksville native Bray Wyatt won the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at the Feb. 12 Elimination Chamber pay-per-view event in Phoenix, Ariz. It is his first World Championship, and it is likely that he will defend it at the WWE’s largest event, WrestleMania, in Orlando, Fla. on April 2.
Placing Wyatt, whose real name is Windham Rotunda, in the Elimination Chamber match came as no surprise to fans as his performances on television captivated audiences on a weekly basis, despite being a villainous character. While it may have been a surprise that he won, it is also agreed that it was overdue for him to capture the World Title.
Participating in the Elimination Chamber match is not for the faint of heart. Advertised by the WWE as weighing over 10 tons, the steel chamber surrounds the ring, with four pods for competitors to wait in until it is their time to enter the match.
The matches are fairly routine in terms of rules. Of the six competitors, two start while the other four enter the pods. Every five minutes, one of the pods is “randomly” opened, allowing for that competitor to join the fray. Eliminations in the match are caused by pin-fall or submission, and the match continues until only one person remains.
Competing with Wyatt were multiple former World Champions, including AJ Styles, current Intercontinental Champion Dean Ambrose, The Miz and defending champion John Cena. Rounding out the competition was Baron Corbin, the only other competitor to not have a World Championship reign to his name.
The match itself was a great choreography of brutality. After eliminating Corbin, Ambrose was viciously attacked by the self-proclaimed “lone wolf,” being sent through the Lexan glass that covered one of the pods. Most, if not all, of the competitors were slammed into the chamber’s steel fencing that contained the pro-wrestlers inside the structure. Cena took a nasty fall from higher up on the fence to outside of the ring, leaving him incapacitated for a considerable amount of time.
Towards the end of the match, it fell to the final three, Cena, Styles and Wyatt. Despite a typically Herculean effort from Cena he was caught by Wyatt’s finishing maneuver, a swinging reverse STO he calls “Sister Abigail.” This finished off Cena, ending his record tying 16th world championship reign at 15 days – one of his shortest reigns as champion – and leaving just Styles and Wyatt in the match.
Styles, widely regarded as one of the best performers currently in Professional Wrestling, had started the match with Cena. While it seemed that he would recapture the World Championship, Wyatt was able to hit “Sister Abigail” to finish Styles, and the match.
Wyatt is the first World Champion in his family’s history. A third generation pro-wrestler, both his grandfather and father had distinguished careers, winning multiple tag-team championships as well as other single’s titles, but neither of them were able to capture a world title.
His brother, going by the name of Bo Dallas, also is signed to the WWE, and has had some success in their NXT developmental territory, being recognized as the youngest NXT champion.
Barring unforeseen injury, this leads to a WrestleMania match in Orlando against the Royal Rumble match winner Randy Orton. This is an interesting story, as Orton is currently a member of the wrestling stable called the “Wyatt Family,” which is led by Wyatt. The question turns to what happens next, something that is hard to predict for the first time in a while with the WWE programming. All that is known is the Smackdown brand of WWE television became more intriguing for the next few weeks leading up to WrestleMania.