10 Ups & 7 Downs For Daniel Bryan’s WWE Career

Downs…

1. His Original NXT Run

Daniel Bryan, in the words of Michael Cole, was a “nerd”. A “vegan nerd”. He was devoid of “charisma,” which must naturally occur in and be obtained by osmosis from “meat”. Bryan was also told, as he carried a keg around the ring in one of those donkey-brained challenges, that he was “deformed”.

Signed halfheartedly by WWE, who acknowledged but were still mystified by the buzz the American Dragon had generated on the Independent scene, Bryan didn’t debut as a technical specialist, nor even a bland babyface: he debuted as the man least likely to succeed under WWE’s sports entertainment umbrella because he wasn’t “entertaining”. The consensus best wrestler in the world entered WWE as a “rookie”. Nothing he had accomplished previously meant a damn thing, because it didn’t happen in WWE—a far cry from the free agent coups spotted in the front row of TakeOver events.

In 2003, seven years removed from his proper WWE debut, Bryan Danielson f*cking did this, as lovingly tweeted by Maffew.

He groomed his beard and guaranteed an upcoming victory to an interviewer by humping mid-air in tandem with his three count. Bryan was always a charismatic boy-popper, but it was as if WWE deemed technicality and charisma mutually exclusive; just because The Miz didn’t boast both, it meant the man framed as his opposite didn’t, either.

Treated as the biggest loser in a cruel, counterproductive, crazed parade of them, only in retrospect does this bizarre chapter complement Bryan’s story; the American Dragon got over in spite of it.