“Harper to get it in. Throws it to Ewing. Ewing surrounded. Two seconds to shoot. He drives, he shoots, he missed. He missed! He missed!!! We win! Ring the bell baby, ding dong the witch is dead! And the Pacers have won it- 97 to 95 and we’re going to Disney world!!!”
“Sax waiting on deck, but the game right now is at the plate. High fly-ball into right field, she is gone! In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened.
“Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”
It’s not just the missed shots, home-runs & victories we remember- it’s the calls that accompany them too. The over-the-top excitement, the over-arching storyline, the quotable lines, we love It all!
A moment that has been months in the making, Bray Wyatt made his in-ring return on Monday night, after weeks of his Firefly Funhouse segments. Wyatt had been breaking down the fourth wall from his Husky Harris gimmick to Vince’s micro-managing of the creative process, all while getting the WWE Universe to see him as relevant again.
With so much hype and momentum because the vignettes were given proper length without rushing them, you would have thought the moment would have been epic… nope, it fell flat.
Not because of Wyatt’s epic Heath Ledger-adjace mask. Not because of the kayfabe-appropriate malfunctioning lights and music that would require no mystical, magical dark powers to make happen. Not because of anything that Bray did, but because of two men: Michael Cole & Corey Graves.
After the lights go out in the arena, you can hear a disruption in the ring, but it’s sixteen seconds before Captain Obvious, Corey Graves says, “there’s something going on in the ring.”
Flood lights from the floor pour into the ring to reveal Wyatt in his mask, but for eight seconds all we get is Michael Cole saying, “Oh my God… is that…” followed by Graves replying, “you know who it is. It’s Bray Wyatt!” As if, they haven’t been responding to Firefly Funhouse after Firefly Funhouse where Bray wears that mask.
In the words of Gary Bertier in Remember the Titans, “push ‘em, pull ‘em, do something!” A pregnant pause with a purpose is one thing. It’s a whole other thing when it feels like the only thing Vince was communicating from guerrilla was “make sure to say his monkier, the Fiend! That will give the people what they want…”
The most appropriate audio of the segment (ironically) was the “holy expletive” chant that the crowd rang out through the arena, because even though the announcing left something to be desired, Bray Wyatt absolutely nailed the moment.
His timing on delivering the Sister Abigail finisher onto a lifeless Finn Balor was perfect. His chin was tilted up at the exact right angle to combine cockiness and chaos to come. There was not a trace of humor, or parody or confusion.
Corey Graves said it himself, “there’s no doubt, this man is going to terrorize WWE.”
All that to be said, maybe I was too hard on the guy…
