10 Times WWE Picked The RIGHT Wrestler At The WRONG Time

Conventional wisdom would dictate that there is never a bad time to push Daniel Bryan, what with him being the greatest wrestler of his generation and all.

Sadly, there was nothing conventional about Bryan's ill-fated return to the ring in 2015.

After Bryan was forced to abdicate the WWE Championship due to neck-related injuries in 2014, his return to WWE saw him dropped to the midcard to fight for the Intercontinental Championship. While this was a sensible decision on the face of it - Daniel Bryan was way too popular to not hold a title, but WWE couldn't place their biggest belt on someone who'd just come back from serious injury - the sad truth was that even the IC Title was too big of an ask for the Bryan's still-battered body.

Bryan took the Intercontinental Championship seriously, and wound up paying a heavy price for it. His performance in the WrestleMania 31 ladder match where he won the belt may have lived up to his typically high standards, but it is genuinely uncomfortable viewing when you know what followed. Watching Daniel Bryan engage in a headbutt battle with Dolph Ziggler atop a ladder was fun at the time, but was it really worth the brain lesions that followed? Or the three years it took out of Bryan's career?

It's easy to say in hindsight, but WWE and Daniel Bryan would have been better served waiting even longer for him to come back from his first round of injuries in 2014. Maybe then we'd have three more years of quality matches to look back on before he retires for good (and hopefully of his own volition this time).