10 Times WWE Broke Your Heart And Didn’t Even Care
9. NO! NO! NO!
Daniel Bryan's repeated failures to win the WWE Championship back from Randy Orton after 'The Viper' and Triple H revealed their SummerSlam 2013 collusion were rarely of his own doing but the company's insistence on tired plot devices weren't ever intended to allow for their eventual retconning of the arc.
He hit big barriers because he was supposed to get felled by them. The company thought he was too weak and short and sh*t and didn't eat enough meat or whatever absolutely rank excuse they were using to ignore the most organic audience uprising since responses to Stone Cold Steve Austin forced an entire reframing of the babyface/heel divide.
One month it was a screwy finish, the next the fickle fist of flip-flopping fool The Big Show, the one after the confused motivations of corrupt-all-along referee Shawn Michaels. They were making it up all along until it was gone, unaware that nothing was going anywhere.
For the reward of WrestleMania XXX, fans had to pay more than the $9.99 required for the fancy new WWE Network service - their investment needed to be as consistent and constant as it was for months. Few other gimmicks would have even survived in those conditions, let alone thrived.