Jake Roberts: WWE Has “Really Watered Down” Bray Wyatt’s Character

Jake “The Snake” Roberts spoke with Sports Illustrated this week and gave his thoughts on the WWE Championship program headed into WrestleMania involving Bray Wyatt and Randy Orton. The WWE Hall of Famer is a longtime proponent of Bray Wyatt, is happy to see him as champion but thinks WWE has completely mishandled the booking of his character. Wyatt’s recent WWE Championship victory was met with “You deserve it!” chants, something Jake feels wouldn’t be happening if fans fully bought into the cult leader character.

“It’s great that Bray is champion, but my worry is that they’re pulling him away from his character,” said Roberts. “The people were chanting, ‘You deserve it!’ to him on Smackdown after he won the title. Is that a chant for a heel? Hell no, but that’s just the nature of the business these days. Bray needs to do something really nasty, and now is the time. He needs to be the one to do something crude and wrong.”

Wyatt ended John Cena’s 2-week championship reign and is set to face Randy Orton in just a matter of weeks. With this being the first world title for the Eater of Worlds, Roberts firmly believes he needs to have a long run with the title to establish his credibility as a main eventer.

“Hopefully they’ll let him keep his character and hold onto the belt for a while,” said Roberts. “If this is just WWE quickly using Bray to change the guard, then it’s a waste of time. They’ve really hurt his character in the last year. They’ve really watered it down."

“Randy Orton has a lot of going for him. He’s just missing that last little piece. I would love to spend time with him and see if I could help him. I’ve offered that before, and no one replied, so there you go. It hurts because I love the business and I want to give back to it. It’s a damn shame that I reached out and didn’t hear anything, it made me sick to my stomach.”

Roberts thinks the best storyline route is for Randy to turn full-on babyface and for Wyatt to reform the classic Wyatt family with Harper and Rowan.

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream #EraIfWyatt pic.twitter.com/jgK3QjGg4O

— Bray Wyatt (@WWEBrayWyatt) February 27, 2017