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

7. Best RAW Bout Machine/Rise Of The YES! Movement

Daniel Bryan lit up RAW throughout 2013 as an incendiary TV match specialist.

Easily the height of the show’s largely dismal three-hour era, Bryan entered outstanding, battling performances in different, must-see matches with Randy Orton and Cesaro, most notably, exhibiting a strain of pure babyface fire so rare in the modern era.

Introducing a trademark ‘WWE’ sequence to his repertoire—in which he backflipped off the turnbuckle, and ducked a clothesline before blasting back with a flying version of his own—Bryan repackaged himself as a megastar for everybody, the wrestling über-nerds and the smallest children with the shortest attention spans alike. A performer for everybody, everybody was behind the performer. Except…

Bryan had already fashioned multiple identities around three letters—Y-E-S—proving that he is as resourceful a performer as he is a human being. In 2013, Bryan initiated the YES! movement proper. Fans didn’t merely chant along because it was a fun bit of crowd interaction; they felt it was vital to shout it at a volume that could not be ignored.

In Peak WWE fashion, ignore it WWE did. Until they absolutely could not…