10 Ups & 7 Downs For Daniel Bryan’s WWE Career
4. B+ Player
Don’t give WWE credit.
Though John Cena appointed Daniel Bryan as his SummerSlam 2013 opponent in a white-hot angle—there was no other choice, and he recognised that—WWE chose Randy Orton as the man to advance the company. The Authority at first acted as a vehicle to get Daniel Bryan over—but only as Orton’s protagonist, not the protagonist of the company at large. Their programme underwhelmed, mostly as a result of fatalistic, dragged-out booking, and that, it seemed, was that for Bryan’s main event run.
To underscore this, it didn’t matter to WWE who was stood in the opposite corner. In a truly Peak Vince development, the Chairman, utterly bemused by Bryan’s popularity, attempted to siphon it to The Big Show by having him co-opt the YES! chant. Show was antithetical to Bryan, and his mini-push only illustrated the extent to which Vince didn’t understand. Blackly comedic on the face of it—“Chant for the giant instead, he’s bigger!”—it was nonetheless impossible to laugh.
Originally, the B+ Player wasn’t even set to feature in his own subplot.
From Triple H to Sheamus, Bryan was relegated to the midcard as Vince McMahon attempted to juggle his need for beef with CM Punk’s owed favour—but since Punk deemed that a favour to Triple H, he split, leaving McMahon with one abandoned match, and one fans had threatened to abandon en masse…