ADWP - Episode 11 - Bray Wyatt Becoming Immortal

23 days ago
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Windham Lawrence Rotunda (May 23, 1987 – August 24, 2023) was an American professional wrestler. He was best known for his tenure in WWE from 2009 until his death in 2023, primarily under the ring name Bray Wyatt.
Rotunda was a third-generation wrestler, following in the footsteps of his grandfather Blackjack Mulligan, his father Mike Rotunda, and his uncles Barry and Kendall Windham. His younger brother Taylor is also a wrestler under the ring name Bo Dallas. Alongside his brother, he held the FCW Florida Tag Team Championship twice while in WWE's then-developmental territory, Florida Championship Wrestling (FCW). He wrestled under various ring names between 2008 and 2012 in FCW, and wrestled on WWE's main roster from 2010 to 2011 as a member of The Nexus under the ring name Husky Harris.
After returning to WWE's developmental territory, which had been rebranded as NXT, Rotunda was repackaged as Bray Wyatt. Portrayed as the villainous leader of a bayou-dwelling cult called The Wyatt Family, he returned to the main roster alongside Wyatt Family members Luke Harper and Erick Rowan in 2013. He subsequently became a one-time WWE Champion, two-time WWE Universal Champion, one-time SmackDown Tag Team Champion (alongside Harper and brief Wyatt Family member Randy Orton under the Freebird Rule), and one-time Raw Tag Team Champion (with Matt Hardy).
After a hiatus from August 2018 to April 2019, Wyatt returned with a new split personality gimmick that saw him switch between two characters: Bray Wyatt, who was a Mr. Rogers-esque children's TV host, and The Fiend, which was a grotesque monster resembling an evil clown. He was released from WWE in July 2021, but returned at the 2022 Extreme Rules with a new character that claimed to be his "real-life" self while gradually reincorporating his previous personalities in addition to new ones. In what would become his only televised match during his return, he defeated LA Knight at the 2023 Royal Rumble; the following month, he took a medical hiatus due to a COVID-19 diagnosis that exacerbated a pre-existing heart condition, and died of a heart attack on August 24 at the age of 36.

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