10 Times WWE Had Their Head Up Their Ass
3. Burying Daniel Bryan In 2010
Signed on the recommendation of William Regal, WWE surveyed Daniel Bryan and were astonished at what they saw: a short, pale technician who didn't look like a superstar and couldn't possibly be a superstar.
Irrespective of whether or not that was true - it absolutely was not - his burial on the first season of NXT wasn't just inexplicable in isolation. WWE was only big by the standards of a shrunken industry, but the relative size of the organisation impressed itself, at least.
FCW was the Five Star Wrestling to the top end of an indie circuit that was closer to WWE in this analogy.
And yet WWE had the outrageous gall to dampen Bryan's achievements - incidentally, why in the f*ck would you do this when promoting new talent - as big nothings because he worked "high school gyms". Motherf*cker, the FCW facility had no running water in place for months. What did this malicious campaign - Bryan was variously a "deformed vegan nerd with no charisma," per Michael Cole - say about his NXT peer group? Was the audience to simply infer their automatic star power through a tanned abdominal muscle?
WWE's arrogant dismissal of the independent circuit - which they'd hypocritically change tack on a few years later - led to the state of the market today.