5 Biggest Winners & Losers From WWE SmackDown Live (30 Aug)

1. Loser: Daniel Bryan

The Miz successfully built on the momentum gained through last week’s Talking Smack segment. This was vitally important, as the Intercontinental Champion could easily have been lost in the shuffle he sought to escape had he not followed-up on his explosive rant. We’ll touch on that later, but on the other side of the coin, there was a huge onus on Daniel Bryan to respond strongly this week too.

Bryan was torn down and emasculated by The Miz last week. The IC Champ verbally destroyed the General Manager in front of Renee Young, and his critiques of Bryan’s retirement left the GM looking weak and powerless. Moreover, the fact that Miz was able to provoke Bryan into taking a huff and storming off the set proved that Miz was getting to him, and that Bryan’s reputation had been dealt a stern blow.

Nobody expects a Miz vs. Bryan match at this point, but Bryan had to recover some of his lost power. Instead, WWE chose to try and brush the incident under the rug this week. Shane McMahon called for DB to issue an apology as he provoked the incident in the first place, but Bryan refused, and that was that. No further development, no progress… nothing.

It leaves Bryan looking like an embarrassingly limp authority figure, and while the duo may reignite their rivalry over the coming weeks, Bryan’s credibility has been shot to pieces.

And now for the winners...