50 Ups & 50 Downs For WWE's Decade: The 2010s
37. The Authority Vs Daniel Bryan
It'd be easy enough to classify this as a Down if simply viewed the prism of the Daniel Bryan/Randy Orton singles matches that dragged on and on in 2013's post-SummerSlam rot, but that series of encounters was simply reflective of a company stubbornly refusing to book in line with fan expectation.
More on the Yes Movement later, but so much of that ungainly groundswell was inadvertently driven by WWE themselves.
The company reframed the narrative in the intervening years, noting that Triple H and Stephanie McMahon's storyline crusade against Bryan's success was a necessary mountain for him to climb ahead of a WrestleMania triumph, but the real story exists within the bowels of the WWE Network. The truth is all there - they were actively working to drain the life from an organic entity far stronger than any of them had realised.