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

2. “YOOOUUUU’RRREE FIIIRREEDDDDDD!”

Can you blame Daniel Bryan for not understanding the rules in a company that punishes performers for getting over?

The original Nexus Eight were instructed, loosely, to cause “chaos” on the June 7, 2010 RAW. The aim of the formation segment was to create an unsettling, unhinged and unforgettable scene. That they did; from the menacing encroachment of the direction to the brutally destructive set-piece, the angle remains—despite the largely abysmal follow-up—a genuine highlight of RAW’s rich, 26 year history.

Bryan, who wasn’t briefed on what he wasn’t permitted to do out there, choked poor Justin Roberts with his necktie. Roberts looked helpless—pathetic, even—in what was either a phenomenal sell-job or a moment of legit panic. Sponsors certainly did panic, and Bryan’s career was caught in the backdraft of the furore. Though this treatment was positively gentle in comparison to what JBL had put him through, Bryan was fired for the incident, and missed months of WWE action. He’d have missed more, had Pat Patterson not intervened; McMahon, who had seemingly worked himself into a shoot as a result of his own cockamamie booking, wasn’t convinced—because he had convinced himself otherwise.

Though Bryan’s immediate firing enriches his legacy in hindsight—this becomes a theme of both Bryan’s story and that of WWE itself—it made him a far poorer man.