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WWE superstar Bray Wyatt has died at the age of 36, according to former wrestler turned chief content officer Paul 'Triple H' Levesque, who cited Wyatt's father, former wrestler Mike Rotunda.
"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 privacy at this time," Levesque wrote on his X account.
Wyatt, whose real name was Windham Rotunda, is a former WWE champion and two-time Universal champion, having become one of the company's biggest characters of the past decade.
The third-generation wrestler initially debuted as Husky Harris on the reality show version of NXT and later as a member of the group Nexus before later becoming a mainstay was Bray Wyatt, a cult leader-esque character flanked by Eric Rowan and the late Luke Harper -- also known as Brodie Lee in All Elite Wrestling and other promotions -- as part of the Wyatt Family.
Rotunda would go through several notable incarnations of the character, which later included repackaging himself as a Mr. Rogers-esque host of 'Firefly Funhouse' vignettes as a split personality to 'The Fiend,' a much darker character than he had played previously.
The 36-year-old was among numerous -- and arguably the most surprising of the -- wrestlers released by the company during the COVID-19 pandemic in July 2021 before making his return in October 2022, having only wrestled one televised match at the 2023 Royal Rumble prior to his death.
Rotunda was a third-generation wrestler through his father and maternal grandfather, the late Blackjack Mulligan.