Horrible news from WWE.
Thoughts and prayers go out to this family and friends.
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. Our thoughts are with his family and we ask that everyone respect their…
— Triple H (@TripleH) August 24, 2023
Rest in peace Legend💜💜 🦅
pic.twitter.com/fNNlhlFnXX— Míchaél SNM:🕹 🥕 (@MchaelSNM1) August 24, 2023
Damn man.. Rest Easy Bray Wyatt https://t.co/fNrYqPZbU5
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) August 24, 2023
My heart just absolutely sank.
This is so awful. Rest in Peace to Windham Rotunda AKA Bray Wyatt. I can’t fathom the shock and pain his family must be going through. https://t.co/yol9SerQJ7
— SantiZap (@MrSantiZap) August 24, 2023
Tragic is an understatement. Absolutely heartbreaking. Bray Wyatt was one of the coolest and kindest ppl I met in my 8 years of doing Cheap Heat. An absolute gem. His family has my deepest condolences. RIP Bray. https://t.co/vm2yOUQJgH
— Greg Hyde, Esq. (@StatGuyGreg) August 24, 2023
Windham Lawrence Rotunda (May 23, 1987 – August 24, 2023) was an American professional wrestler. He was signed to WWE, where he performed on the SmackDown brand under the ring name Bray Wyatt.
Rotunda was a third-generation professional wrestler, following in the footsteps of his grandfather Blackjack Mulligan, his father Mike Rotunda, and two of his uncles – Barry and Kendall Windham. His younger brother Taylor Rotunda is also a professional wrestler, best known as 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), where he wrestled under various ring names between 2008 and 2012. He briefly wrestled on WWE’s main roster from 2010 to 2011 under the ring name Husky Harris, most notably as a member of The Nexus.
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 The Wyatt Family, a bayou-dwelling cult, he returned to the main roster alongside Wyatt Family members Luke Harper and Erick Rowan in 2013. He subsequently became a three-time world champion in WWE, holding the WWE Championship once and the Universal Championship twice. He also held the SmackDown Tag Team Championship (with Harper and Randy Orton under the Freebird rule) and the Raw Tag Team Championship (with Matt Hardy) once each.
After a hiatus from August 2018 to April 2019, Wyatt returned with a new gimmick. Portrayed as suffering from a transformative multiple personality disorder, he randomly switched back and forth between two characters: his “good side” of Bray Wyatt, a Mr. Rogers-esque children’s TV host, and his bad side of The Fiend, a grotesque horror-themed monster clown. He was released from WWE in July 2021 and returned at Extreme Rules in October 2022, now with a character that claimed to be his “real-life” self but gradually re-incorporated his multiple personalities in addition to some new ones.
Rest easy Legend.