The New Day vs. The Wyatt Family: The Good, Bad and Ugly of Current WWE Feud

WWE fans will remember The New Day vs. The Wyatt Family feud as a stick of dynamite that was only partially lit.

On Sunday's Battleground pay-per-view, the WWE tag team champions' rivalry with Bray Wyatt and his haunting crew is poised to wrap up. Thanks to the brand split, Wyatt and Erick Rowan are headed to SmackDown, while The New Day and Braun Strowman are set to be exclusive to Raw. That is sure to bring an early climax to a story that never fully blossomed. 

The juxtaposition of the goofy, gyrating New Day and the backwoods titans who make up The Wyatt Family intrigued from the get-go. It was a combustible combination that few saw coming. 

Here was a chance to elevate Wyatt's posse by taking on a top team while also giving The New Day its biggest test in a long while. 

If Battleground does indeed spell the end of the feud, it will have provided only a handful of memorable moments. The clash of trios gave us a brawl in the swamp, some insult battles and lingering thoughts about what could have been.

The Good

Just coming up with the concept of The New Day's clash with The Wyatt Family was a victory for WWE.

The New Day needed tough, gritty foes to balance out its comedy antics. The champs needed a challenge after holding on to the tag team titles since last August. And Wyatt's clan needed direction after he returned from a calf injury he suffered in the spring.

Pitting these two teams against each other created sparks. As A.V. Club's Kyle Fowle pointed out, it left "Wyatt with purpose and fire in his belly."

The contrast of the colorful jokesters and the creepy, bearded beasts made for compelling TV.

Fans have since seen flashes of this rivalry make use of that. Most notably, Xavier Woods has not been himself since tangling with The Wyatt Family. Early on, he looked mesmerized by Wyatt's words.

He has since been more serious and solemn, the key to balancing out his teammates' humor with heart. 

He will be the X-factor in the collision at Battleground. Whether he will turn on his brothers or be able to shake off Wyatt's lure adds a powerful subplot to the match.

The Bad

The WWE calendar may end up being the ruin of this feud.

Given months to develop, The New Day vs. The Wyatt Family rivalry could have explored a number of intriguing avenues. Woods won't have time to unravel, though. Wyatt won't have time to fully bare his teeth in this story.

The WWE draft and subsequent brand split are forcing the narrative to come to a premature close.

That will leave the rivalry unbalanced. It will end having produced more humor than horror. Aside from the tag champs' visit to The Wyatt Family compound, the focus of this feud has been The New Day's firing of zingers at its foes.

The proper response to this would be for Wyatt and his followers to create mayhem and test The New Day's mental mettle. It looks as if it won't get to that point. The final battle is already upon us, with a buildup that will feel incomplete by Battleground.

The Ugly

Unless something magical happens at Battleground, the legacy of The New Day's feud with The Wyatt Family will be its copycat status.

A week after TNA staged the bizarre and beautiful Final Deletion match between Matt and Jeff Hardy, the tag team champs had an eerily similar battle on their hands. The New Day visited The Wyatt Family's compound and battled their foes in a field and atop cars. It came off like a rehashed version of the Hardy brothers' showdown.

And beyond the obvious parallels, its execution underwhelmed. WWE tried a bit too hard to be artsy at times.

Jeff Hawkins of Voices of Wrestling wrote, "The film school pretentiousness was strong in this one—a lot of shaky cam, filters and inexplicable lens flares."

Kudos to WWE for experimenting with the medium, but the timing was poor. Fans didn't judge this on its own; rather, they saw it as pilfering from TNA. 

Projections

Woods will be the centerpiece of the final chapter in this story.

The trombone-playing tag team champion has been off his game thanks to The Wyatt Family. The Eater of Worlds has spooked him, and that will be a key part of the match between these teams at Battleground. Woods will be drawn in by Wyatt's charm and be part of the reason The New Day falls.

As for The Wyatt Family, this will be its send-off. With Strowman now set to be on a different show than his brethren, this faction will dissolve following Battleground.

But Wyatt will score a major win before that happens.

Expect him to be a major player on SmackDown moving forward as a singles star. Pinning the tag champs will be one of the first steps to that process.