House of Horrors Match at WWE Payback 2017 Must Lead to More Experimentation

As bizarre and ridiculous as Randy Orton and Bray Wyatt's trip inside the House of Horrors at WWE Payback 2017 was, it shouldn't be the company's last attempt to travel well outside the box.

The climax of the Orton-Wyatt feud saw the rivals brawl inside a creepy house, where they wrestled on a linoleum floor to a horror-movie score. A driverless tractor strode across the grass. A fridge served as a key weapon.

The House of Horrors match was corny and disjointed, and so it is the subject of much mockery. 

Even so, the bout represents a direction WWE needs to head more often. Orton vs. Wyatt was a reimagining of the pro wrestling medium, an attempt to reshape how one tells a wrestling story and a refreshing departure from the norm.

Not every match should be a showcase of a great work rate. Not every contest should lean on the same cycle of near-falls. 

Pro wrestling benefits from experimentation, from toying with its basic elements.

WWE may not feel like cooking up another House of Horrors-like match anytime soon, however. Critics, for the most part, panned Wyatt's win over The Viper.

Sean Coyle of ESPN.com wrote of it: "Take this for what it was—a short WWE Studios film that's likely to be ridiculed for years to come." ProWrestling.net columnist Jason Powell wrote: "We'll all look back on this and laugh someday."

Its biggest failing wasn't its decision to veer off the beaten path, though, but not to do so more emphatically. 

A match that Wyatt promised to be Orton's eternal prison turned out to be rather tame. There were few supernatural elements. There were minimal spooky props.

WWE didn't put the gas pedal to the floor the way Impact Wrestling did with The Final Deletion.

The 2016 off-the-wall collision between Matt and Jeff Hardy took a bolder approach to delivering a non-conventional match. The Hardys stripped down the artform to its bones and fitted it with a dilapidated boat, a firefight with Roman candles and a crucifix-like logo burning in the dark.

The House of Horrors held back in comparison. The fight finished in the ring, where Jinder Mahal attacked Orton in the type of ending we've seen a hundred times over. 

Orton vs. Wyatt's original elements are what made it compelling. It succeeded in creating an eerie atmosphere and offering memorable images. As a result, the match felt special, warts and all.

As Denny Burkholder of CBS Sports pointed out, the House of Horrors is the type of bout that generates discussion:

It's not surprising that more people are talking about it than Neville vs. Austin Aries despite how much better the cruiserweight title bout was. There's simply more to dissect with a match as unique as Orton vs. Wyatt. 

In art, a failed experiment can often be more interesting than a quality piece born from traditional means.

And there has certainly been interest in Orton vs. Wyatt. At the time of this writing, the YouTube clip from the House of Horrors match had more views than the videos of Seth Rollins vs. Samoa Joe and Alexa Bliss vs. Bayley combined. The U.S., cruiserweight, tag team and women's title bouts all had lower numbers than Orton vs. Wyatt.

That's not a scientific means to evaluate how much fans liked it, but it speaks to the curiosity it generated.

With as much content as WWE produces, the company has to find ways to deliver something we've never seen before. 

In a stream of headlocks and superkicks, the odd refrigerator-crushing stands out. On a calendar that has a dozen PPVs and hours upon hours of wrestling every month, venturing into the unknown at times is welcome.

WWE needs more battles outside of the ring. It needs more clashes in boiler rooms and parking lots, more metaphysical elements to pop up in its narratives, more playful visions of what wrestling is and can be.

Not all of it will work. Originality is risky, as we saw on Sunday.

Still, the House of Horrors should be an inspiration to continue exploring the uncharted corners of the squared circle.