The wrestling promotion has announced that Windham Rotunda (also known as Bray Wyatt in WWE) died at 36 from an unspecified illness.
“Just received a call from WWE Hall of Famer Mike Rotunda who informed us of the tragic news that our WWE family member for life Windham Rotunda – also known as Bray Wyatt – unexpectedly passed earlier today,” WWE chief content officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque On, Social media “Our thoughts are with his family and we ask that everyone respect their privacy at this time.”
Rotunda came from a family of professional wrestlers. His father, WWE Hall of Famer Mike Rotunda performed in 1980s as Irwin R. Shyster. And his grandfather, Robert Windham performed in NWA under the ringname Blackjack Mulligan. Rotunda’s uncles, Barry and Kendall Windham, were also wrestlers in NWA; as is his brother, Taylor, who wrestled in WWE under the ring name Bo Dallas.
Rotunda got his start in wrestling in 2009 in WWE’s developmental division Florida Championship Wrestling, and briefly wrestled on WWE’s main roster under the ring name Husky Harris.
But it wasn’t until 2012 when Rotunda developed the character that would be his big break: Bray Wyatt, a charismatic and deranged cult leader known for passionate and cryptic monologues in which he would declare himself the “Eater of Worlds.” Wyatt would enter the ring in darkness, with the only light coming a lantern he carried to the ring and from the cell phone flashlights of fans whom he would call his “fireflies.”
As the leader of his own group called the Wyatt Family, Bray Wyatt had matches against WWE’s biggest stars, including John Cena, Randy Orton and The Undertaker, all of whom he had matches with at WrestleMania. Wyatt was also WWE Champion for a short time in spring 2017.
Then, after several months off of TV in 2019, Rotunda surprised WWE fans by completely transforming Bray Wyatt from a swamp cult leader into an eccentric children’s TV show host. For weeks, Wyatt perplexed viewers with a vignette series called “Firefly Fun House,” a twisted take on children’s TV shows like “Peewee’s Playhouse” with macabre puppets based on the mythology of Wyatt’s past life as the “Eater of Worlds.”
Then Wyatt turned the gimmick on its head, revealing a violent alter-ego called The Fiend. As The Fiend, Wyatt would carry a new lantern to the ring that resembled the head of his cult leader self and wore a frightful mask co-designed by Tom Savini, the horror makeup artist whose credits include “Dawn of the Dead,” “Friday the 13th” and “The Black Phone.”
This new Wyatt will have bitter rivalries with former wrestlers, such as John Cena. They had a filmic match during a COVID-19-related WrestleMania without an audience.
Wyatt won the WWE Universal Championship as The Fiend during the Pandemic, but lost it to Roman Reigns who holds the title today. He then started a new storyline where he tried to get revenge on Randy Orton after he beat him at WrestleMania 2017 for the WWE championship. However, despite this, resentment was not enough and Orton won again at WrestleMania 2021.
The match that Wyatt fought in was his last for WWE. Rotunda had been released. Wyatt’s return in 2022 was marked by another new gimmick. He claimed to have been a changed man but returned to his violent ways when he fell for a masked, mysterious figure called Uncle Howdy.
Wyatt would have what would be his final match at WWE’s year-opening special event Royal Rumble in a match against rising star LA Knight, winning with the help of Uncle Howdy. Wyatt was set to begin a new storyline for this year’s WrestleMania, but was quietly taken off of WWE programming after Rotunda was diagnosed with an undisclosed illness.
Rotunda leaves behind his daughter Cadyn as well his son Knash.
