10 WWE Gimmicks That Seriously Took The Piss
1. Daniel Bryan (2010)
Michael Cole seriously, seriously took the piss out of Daniel Bryan. But when has WWE's lead announcer for over a decade ever really spoken for himself?
The relentless abuse the announcer doled out began what became a full heel turn for him for a time, with Cole's taxing tirades about Bryan not eating meet or being too short or working on the independent scene being so on-Vince's-f*cking-nose that it's a wonder he didn't find Donald Trump's a*se at the end of each rant.
Whether intentional or not, the wider point being made here was that new 'NXT' arrival was nothing - less than nothing - until he'd cut his teeth in WWE. Which would have been fine if he was given a pro wrestling push from that. Instead he was part of an insufferable assault course (both literal and figurative) game show then fired for making a Nexus beatdown look a little too convincing.
His rehiring in time for SummerSlam distanced him from both the other members of his former group as well as the worst of Cole's abuse. He was just years from being at ground zero for WWE's most obvious fracturing of audience relations, but was it any wonder everybody just wanted to support him after all this?
The problem they deemed the biggest and most inconvenient of the last decade was all of their own doing.