10 Times Wrestlers Took Their Careers Into Their Own Hands
2. Daniel Bryan
The secret of Daniel Bryan's success - other than his supreme technicality and inherent geniality - is that he genuinely wasn't that bothered. This ethos didn't manifest as laziness, à la Carlito, but rather a carefree approach to the pressurised WWE environment.
Bryan was buried into the core of the earth when he debuted on the gameshow iteration of NXT. He laughed it off. He was portrayed as a dork who couldn't possibly seduce women, but did so in a ladies' man rib gimmick. He smiled inwardly, and promptly dated Brie Bella IRL. After a spate of dynamite performances landed him the role of transitional heel champion to Sheamus in late 2011, Bryan, delighted by the self-cheerleading antics of UFC fighter Diego Sanchez, repurposed the psych-up bro routine as a cloying bit of self-masturbation. With this forgiveness-later approach, he in turn delighted fans with the intoxicating chutzpah of it.
Headlining WrestleMania was clearly an ambition, but not the ambition.
As a staunch aficionado of the entire wrestling world, the prospect of headlining the Tokyo Dome and Triplemanía was as enticing - and thus he paid the eggshell-strewn WWE floor no mind at all.