Wrestling is a love story

Wrestling was dealt its latest tragedy by the shocking passing of Windham Rotunda

Wrestling is art. It is beauty, it is comedy, it is theatre, it is live-action combat, it is fight scenes and monologues, it is tragedy and it’s everything else.

Fans of the most accessible art form have unfortunately had to get used to horrific news over the years, the deaths of fan favourites an all too familiar occurrence.

On Thursday night WWE’s head of creative Paul Levesque, better known to some by his performing moniker Triple H, announces to the world that Windham Rotunda, better known as Bray Wyatt, had sadly passed away.

At just 36-years-old Rotunda leaves behind four children, two with ex-wife Samantha and two with partner JoJo, a former WWE ring announcer.

It is the first time that an active wrestler for the company has died since the death of Chris Benoit in 2007, a whole other kind of tragedy.

Sadly though it is not the first time that the wrestling world has had to deal with the mixed emotions of mourning the passing of a human being who bared his all in the ring for our enjoyment and celebrating the wonderment of the character they created inside the squared circle.

It is less than three years ago since Windham’s former tag team partner Jonathan Huber, also known as Brodie Lee and Luke Harper, sadly passed away whilst he was working for AEW.

The pair enjoyed success as the Wyatt Family, joined by Erick Rowan and latterly Brawn Strowman, and were one of the scariest and most brilliant characters that the WWE had seen in some time. They were so different from much of what else was going on when they debuted on the main roster in 2012.

Their rivalry with the Shield goes down as one of the most memorable in recent history, between six men who could really go and told such a striking tapestry of a story. Feuds with John Cena and Daniel Bryan were also high points of the Wyatt character.

He briefly held the WWE Championship in 2017, a victory that was extremely popular despite the fact that he was still somewhat of a storyline bad guy at the time.

In 2019 Rotunda brought out a new character, The Fiend. He would appear in vignettes as a kind of kid’s television presenter which had a creepy undertone and would then flash up as the Fiend, a much scarier persona with a mask that could haunt your dreams.

I was lucky enough to be in the crowd when the persona made its in-ring debut at Summerslam that year, to take on Finn Balor.

Just thinking about the entrance makes the hairs stand on edge. Rotunda coming down to the ring with a lantern of his former character’s face whilst wearing his new terrifying mask to the most perfect music.

Wrestling has this way of making you feel, it takes you on a magic journey away from reality but to a new reality where you believe everything you see is real. When a non-wrestling fan tells you it’s fake it’s not like you don’t know that but wrestling done well, whether that’s the art of ‘professional wrestling’ or ‘sports entertainment’ (they’re the same thing really but for argument's sake), it allows you to suspend your belief.

Few were as good at that as Rotunda. His creative mind and his ability to bring it to life were second to none. That was best brought to life in his WrestleMania 36 match with Cena. The Firefly Funhouse match wasn’t to everyone’s liking, I personally loved it, but the originality of it cannot be denied. The Fiend taking Cena back through his wrestling career, including the failures and losses.

Every story about the man behind the characters outside of the ring speaks of a kind-hearted, beautiful, man of the people. Clips of him stopping to speak to fans and take pictures are further proof this was the case.

In his own perfect words Rotunda said of wrestling: “It's an escape. A reason to point the blame at anyone but yourself for 2-3 hours. An excuse to be a kid again, and nothing matters except the moment we are in.

“Wrestling is not a love story, it's much more. It's hope.

“And in a world surrounded in hate, greed and violence, a world where closure may never come. We all know a place that has hot and cold hope on tap. For better or for worse.”

Rotunda may have got it wrong, I believe wrestling is a love story. Sadly it’s one that all too often has a tragic ending.