10 Ups & 7 Downs For Daniel Bryan’s WWE Career

5. From 18 Seconds To Heel Super-Worker

Daniel Bryan was in outstanding form throughout 2012.

After the humiliation that was WrestleMania XXVIII, Bryan rebounded in a bruising Extreme Rules war with Sheamus as punishingly brutal as it was very clever in its mutually-flattering layout. It was everything the ‘Mania match wasn’t. Recognising his main event credentials, WWE promoted him from the World Heavyweight to the WWE Championship picture.

Across Over The Limit and Money In The Bank, Bryan and CM Punk wrestled both an Indy-style technical masterclass and their own, minor classic spin on the weapons-heavy WWE brawl, proving that they were capable of diversifying WWE’s in-ring language and adapting to it.

Complementing his genius in-ring work with a revolting, negging character slant as AJ Lee’s toxic love interest—proving that a man as fundamentally decent as he is could work us, thus disproving the idea that the best wrestlers must rely on their own character traits to connect with the audience—Bryan in 2012 became a veritable polymath with a chameleon-like ability to slot—and star in—any segment of the broad TV enterprise he was apparently, fundamentally unsuited to.

For further evidence of that…