10 Times WWE Completely Buried Ring Of Honor World Champions

1. NO!

Daniel Bryan Stephanie McMahon
WWE.com

Daniel Bryan's start to life in WWE was remarkably stupid, but the company robust efforts to actively prohibit his place in main events was a stubborness from management unlike anything in company history.

They'd laid the table well, with a desperately upsetting Money In The Bank cash-in at the 'Yes Man's expense following his clean WWE Title victory over John Cena at SummerSlam 2013. It was the sort of occurrence that warranted...nay, required revenge from the hero, but Bryan was instead made to beating after beating after beating after relentless beating from Orton and his new Authority comrades in a series of humbling assaults that the company have since re-imagined as exquisite sympathy-building.

To live through it was to know the truth. Never, ever, ever had a top babyface been beaten so soundly without retribution, especially considering that he was unable to reclaim his WWE Title in three separate pay-per-view main events against 'The Viper' following his SummerSlam loss.

Shifting him out of the title picture after the third loss, the company thought they'd tempered crowd support, but had instead only galvanised it. From The Big Show to John Cena and beyond, the crowd voiced their abject refusal of anybody but Bryan.

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Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation over 8 years. He primarily produces written, audio and video content on WWE and AEW, but also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 35 years. As one third of "The Dadley Boyz" Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast and its accompanying YouTube channel, earning it top spot in the UK's wrestling podcast charts with well over 62,000,000 total downloads. Within the podcasting space, he also co-hosts Benno & Hamflett, In Your House! and Podcast Horseman: The BoJack Horseman Podcast. He has been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times, Fightful, POST Wrestling, GRAPPL, GCP, Poisonrana and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling, and has covered milestone events in New York, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, London and Cardiff. Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in sports, music and culture magazines The Crack, A Love Supreme and Pilot. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it singing far too loud watching his favourite bands play live. Follow him on X/Twitter - @MichaelHamflett