Title Lost: WWE World Heavyweight Championship Lost Title To: Surrendered Title Lost: Intercontinental Championship Lost Title To: Surrendered When Daniel Bryans wrestling epitaph is written, it will probably include phrases like improbable underdog, unparalleled fan favorite and hard-luck champion. Bryan was (and still is) the undersized, talented indy star who organically connected with WWE fans in a way that the company only wishes it could duplicate with in-house creations like Roman Reigns. Bryan improbably won the WWE Championship at SummerSlam 2013, then spent the rest of summer and fall fighting Randy Orton and the Authority over the title. He faded out of the title picture until after the Royal Rumble, when the fans forcefully reinserted him into the program, culminating in a WWE World Heavyweight Championship victory at WrestleMania XXX. Bryans storybook title reign would end after less than three months when he was forced to surrender the title due to legit injuries. Those injuries would keep him out of action until January 2015. Bryan would never get a world title rematch, as it transitioned from John Cena to Brock Lesnar. Instead, Daniel was moved to the Intercontinental Championship, which he won at WrestleMania XXXI. It seemed like a fitting consolation prize, but that reign would be even shorter, as injuries once again forced him to forfeit the title. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ3m9waPHkA Ryback is the current IC champ, so unless Bryan recovers before the Big Guy loses his title, this will be a second consecutive title D-Bry has lost and never gotten a chance to recapture.
Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.
