10 Best Wrestling Talkers Of 2019 (So Far)
2. Daniel Bryan
Any heel can, and often does, localise their verbal assault on the audience. Your sports team sucks, they particularly sucked during their recent embarrassment, and additionally, you all smell and or are stupid. In the hands of most heels, this material, which can soar if the promo is witty enough, is cheap heat.
In Daniel Bryan's, it enriches his character.
Bryan doesn't do this merely to generate a reaction; he does it because it is consistent with his bravura character which, fittingly, is 100% organic. Bryan has astonishing tonal range; he can deliver the material smugly, which enhances his intellectual prowess, and he can seethe with incandescent fury to underscore the drastic extent to which we are complicit in watching his beloved planet burn. It's an intense extension of himself; there's real authenticity behind his words, and he is a deeply intelligent man, one intelligent enough to pinpoint a viable motive to create conflict in his programmes. Kevin Owens wasted his inherent wrestling genius by coasting on it; Kofi Kingston worked as hard as Bryan, but lacked his mental strength to reach the pinnacle.
There's a comedic nuance aligned with sports entertainment values - Bryan's nicknames for cows and pigs frame him as a touch too weird a PETA disciple - cementing him as the best and most versatile promo man in the entire company.