DES MOINES — According to Bray Wyatt, Roman Reigns is a “failure,” but it was Wyatt who was left out in the cold at the end of a qualifying match for the Men’s Elimination Chamber Match, where Universal Champion Brock Lesnar’s WrestleMania opponent will be decided.

Fighting words aside, that’s a bitter pill for Wyatt to swallow, given that he won his first WWE Championship inside the Chamber last year and has been chasing those heights since losing the title at WrestleMania. Re-entering the site of his greatest triumph would have been the perfect launching point for him, and Wyatt fought like a man who understood the stakes, taking the match to the outside when Reigns began to gain the advantage.

Even when The Big Dog slowly but surely clawed his way back, Wyatt hung with him every step of the way, turning the match into a high-stakes war of attrition. Reigns regained the upper hand by kicking out of Sister Abigail to send Wyatt into a twitchy, wide-eyed frenzy and powering out of a second attempt in order to set up a match-ending Spear. The loss would have been bad enough for Wyatt, of course. But thanks to a post-match attack from “Woken” Matt Hardy, whom Wyatt cost a Chamber position last week, The Eater of Worlds’ night ended in something even worse than failure: Deletion.