THE WYATT SICKS WERE SIMPLY TOO CREATIVE FOR WWE
- 5 hours ago
- 5 min read
It was too perfect.
An homage to the mind of the late, great Bray Wyatt. His brother Bo Dallas would take on the mantle of putting “the New Face of Fear’s” dreams to reality. He put together a group of talent that were either under-utilized or unappreciated, in ways linked to Bray, into a faction that would systematically and innovatively dominate WWE’s landscape.
The Wyatt Sicks was a can’t miss goldmine of creativity and marketability.
And yet, they weren’t even able to scratch the surface of what they could do.
Last week, “Uncle Howdy”, Nikki Cross, Joe Gacy, Dexter Lumis, and Erick Rowan, on top of other very talented individuals, were released from their WWE contracts in a complete stunner. It was a move that no one had seen coming.
The rumors circulated that TKO, the parent owner of WWE, saw the Wyatts, as well as Aleister Black and Zelina Vega, as “too dark” of characters, hence their release.
Bravo Sierra.
The blame should solely fall on the creative structure of how WWE has been formatting their product.
It feels like a cycle. Talents are practically seen every other week, except for the top level guys. There aren’t story threads in their programming as much as it used to. Instead of trying to get as many talents on the show each week, it has slowly begun to really try and treat the product as a legitimate sport instead of the spectacle we’ve seen over the past forty years.
It’s not a free-flowing show; it’s fragmented into a slot each week. Initially, the Wyatts transcended that mindset.
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The Wyatt Sicks began with such innovative fervor. The QR codes, the live event grassroots build and the cryptic clues on television built to anticipation. It was amazing.
Then, after Gacy, Lumis, Rowan, Cross, and Howdy built the Firefly Fun House to life, they debuted in an epic segment on the June 17, 2024 Raw, where it literally looked like a horror movie, taking out everyone backstage, including an injured Chad Gable.
After a few weeks, they had an excellent in-ring debut against Gable & the Creed Brothers on the August 5th Raw, where they picked up the win in an emotional affair, dedicated to Bray.
After winning the feud in September…NOTHING.
In December, the foundation was laid for a rivalry between the Wyatt Sicks and the Final Testament & the Miz, but that quickly faded when the Wyatts were inexplicably moved to SmackDown in January 2025.
After an injury to Howdy, the entire group was kept off television until May, as the Wyatts began to terrorize the entire thriving SmackDown tag team division, culminating in Gacy & Lumis winning the WWE Tag Team Titles on July 11, 2025 against the Street Profits.
I will say this: the underappreciated SmackDown division needed the Wyatts to put eyes on them for all the hard work they were putting in. I dare say that for that short window, it was the best tag division the WWE has had in at least a decade.
DIY, the Motor City Machine Guns, Andrade & Rey Fenix, Fraxiom, the Profits, & the Wyatt Sicks got props for their hard work, as they had a six-team TLC match at SummerSlam inside of MetLife Stadium on August 3. It was a car crash spectacle, and in the end, Gacy & Lumis retained.
At this point, a lot of the elements that made the Wyatt Sicks what they were as characters were gone. In truth, they felt like another stereotypical wrestling group, unlike the special attraction that they should’ve been, in the vein of the Undertaker decades before.
Then, the MFT, a group headed by Solo Sikoa, and the Wyatts engaged into a long-term rivalry that, in my honest opinion, felt flat, with no fault to the talents involved. At the end of the day, the Wyatts lost the feud on the SmackDown before WrestleMania on April 17, 2026, and were released a week later.
Mind. Boggling.
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To me, with the hype and build of the group, WWE didn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what could have been. That is the fault of WWE creative.
I have had my own beliefs on what works with mainstream wrestling, especially in the modern era. With EVERYONE putting on excellent matches now, nothing stands out as different. It has to be about the presentation. And even though UnReal, the Netflix based program, opens up the curtain to the creative process (which it really doesn’t, for the record), the head creative members in the room are lifers inside the wrestling bubble. Anything outside-the-box is not truly understood. There's nothing really creative going on in the room.
We live in a time where fans want creative spectacles. They want strong stories. They want innovative characters. Unlike the Attitude Era, the fans aren’t getting that. When the creative room isn’t injected with youth, the “same old, same old” from the good ol’ boys network happens.
Anyone within the wrestling bubble is certainly not “with it”. And it has plagued WWE ever since the end of WrestleMania XL in 2024, with the end of the original Bloodline story.
This is how I know that the Wyatt Sicks was completely botched. In 2025, Universal Studios in Orlando and Hollywood had The Horrors of the Wyatt Sicks exhibit during Halloween. The visions of Bray Wyatt and the entire faction were on display to complete fan approval. It was an innovative concept and actually brought a different genre of fans to WWE programming.
How does this not translate to a massive opportunity on television each and every week? Easy. The WWE creative team didn’t “get it”.
I once wrote an article in 2017 called Art and Commerce Doesn't Mix in Wrestling. I had a couple lines in there that really hit home.
I once heard a line from Conan O’Brien on the Johnny Carson: King of Late Night documentary from PBS that really struck me.
“It’s always going to be a tricky marriage - art and commerce. It’s always going to be fraught with tension. It just is. It’s built into the system. That’s what happens, you know?”
That line has never been more true than with the Wyatt Sicks. Gacy, Lumis, Rowan, Cross, and Dallas deserved better. Bray Wyatt deserved better. True art can’t be infiltrated in a modern-day corporate entertainment structure. It’s all about the widgets and the KPIs. It’s about working within the system, not being something that has its own uniqueness.
Let’s tell it for what it is.
The Wyatt Sicks were simply too creative for WWE.
And that’s a damn shame.
Jon Harder
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