Bray Wyatt and his person of The Fiend took the wrestling world by storm, for better and worse. The Fiend was an interesting concept at first, but the more “the lore” of Bray Wyatt showed up and WWE added their ideas to the concept, ti was all downhill from there.
Wrestlers lately have been trying to captivate fans the same way The Fiend and The Undertake have done before. This is a bad idea, trying to recreate those two unique concepts. If a gimmick and storyline requieres a Reddit or Twitter thread to explain it, you are overthinking it, the simpler wrestling is, the better.
Malakai Black (Tommy End) is the latest wrestler to attempt “the lore” thing and this video was received by mixed reviews. The video was well produced and had an indie movie feel to it, but the lore thing and supernatural stuff was the part of the video was the most criticized thing about it.
Doing Lore characters require a lot of work. Matt Hardy went with a different direction than most and he never took himself seriously and understood the ridiculousness of the character. He played with the idea and fans connected to it. When you take yourself too seriously and do supernatural stuff, it just feels disconnected, especially considering this types of gimmicks requiere a lot of investing money-wise.
What wrestling needs is more badasses. Malakai Black should stay away from the lore thing and just be a badass guy who has cool tattoos and does MMA and other martial arts as part of his moveset. Hopefully AEW will make a balance between the badass character should be and the wacky lore stuff Malakai Black wants to do.
Wrestling is a diverse medium and there’s no right and wrong answer of what wrestling is. The lore stuff are also a part of wrestling and when you do it the right way, cool things can come of it.
