10 Rare Awesome WWE Surprises
1. Daniel Bryan Returns At SummerSlam 2010
Daniel Bryan was fired by WWE for his role in the infamous Nexus formation angle of June 2010.
Given his bizarre run on NXT, it made a terrible sort of sense that he was the fall guy. In a strange departure from the usual over-produced mode in which WWE operates, the eight NXT contestants - i.e., those least familiar with the lay of the land, the hidden curriculum of not what to do, as if that were ever fixed in place - were instructed to go out there and cause a disruption. Bryan, avid wrestling mind, probably surveyed the scene, and, with memories of corpse-shagging and widow-pestering in his head, thought it was OK to strangle Justin Roberts with his necktie to get himself over as an indiscriminate rebel primed to remove every last cog of a machine that had ground him down.
He returned at SummerSlam, after Miz had hesitated to commit to Team WWE. It was a shocking, very welcome surprise; WWE barely seemed to like Bryan when he was there, much less enough to re-sign him and risk displeasing sponsors.
This was a great return in itself, and it resumed his programme with the Miz very effectively. Miz was apoplectic at the idea of Bryan replacing him.
Tremendous world-building stuff that informed the next phase of the narrative, this was antithetical to the usual, definitive cop-out.