10 Times WWE Had Their Head Up Their Ass
2. Not Pushing Daniel Bryan In 2013
Daniel Bryan was the guy, but he didn't look like the guy, so he wasn't the guy.
The fact that it was as stark as that made the decision for legions of WWE fans to f*ck it all off quite easy. He was over, but he wasn't tall. The dissonance only Vince McMahon felt mystified him, and so, faced with a stark truth his brain simply could not register, he responded with a solution only he deemed acceptable:
Give the whacky short guy's chant to a big fella!
This was criminal. The Big Show was antithetical to Daniel Bryan. Ancient, lumbering and stigmatised as a main event bust, he wasn't the vital, explosive master storyteller fans were desperate to receive as the man. If the WWF asked Pete Gas to raise his eyebrow and bask in the adulation of the millions, you're really not that far off.
But you see, Big Show wasn't short.
Bryan wasn't tanned, either, and nor was he an in-house guy, so let's go ahead and use him to heat up Randy Orton's umpteenth mega-push, since they always move the needle.
Bryan was a star in himself, and his intoxicating 2013 run shouldn't be put forward as a symbol. But he was that, too: everything he embodied took root elsewhere, and this week, those tendrils at last suffocated RAW's 18-49 performance.
Astonishingly, WWE f*cked this up twice...