Assuming that it’s Daniel Bryan vs. HHH at WrestleMania and no title match later on, they are building on an already monumental mistake. It’s funny, my plan for Daniel Bryan would’ve been a match vs. HHH at WrestleMania to help get him to the next level but that’s before he started getting next level reactions and YES! hit the mainstream. After that you have to give him “the big push” and give him the win at the Royal Rumble. Watch the PPV back that crowd was ready to fucking EXPLODE when his music hit but unfortunately they didn’t pull the trigger and let Rey Mysterio have it. Felt bad for Rey, people in the back deserved that, not him.
The latest flavour of the month excuse for the brutal booking of Daniel Bryan is “They’re doing a slow burn, you guys are impatient complainers.” The reason that is such a joke is because the purpose of doing the slow burn is so that you don’t make fans sick of a guy and can get him to the kind of reactions Daniel Bryan IS ALREADY GETTING. The slow burn started at WrestleMania 28 when Sheamus Brogue Kicked him and won the title in 18 seconds. Fans were already starting the YES! chants then but after seeing a great wrestler like Daniel Bryan embarrassed like that, the chants along with his popularity exploded on Raw. But instead of pushing him then they pulled back and put him with Kane for Hell No which turned out to be a great call. I really respected it because I don’t know if I would have done it but as soon as they did I saw the benefits it would have. Daniel Bryan was already a great wrestler but he really grew as a performer during his run with Kane, and they were damn entertaining despite some of the crap they were given to work with. He was booked awful but at times it was entertaining enough that people were ok with waiting a bit longer and going with Hell No.
So we wait another year for Daniel Bryan to get his shot at the top and despite booking that doesn’t make him look strong he gets himself a title shot at SummerSlam. Nobody is thinking DB walks out of that match with the title but he does! and gets immediately screwed out of the title. Now I can’t lie I was actually a fan of that going down because there is a bigger payoff on the horizon. Screw him out of the title but keep him strong so that when the Royal Rumble comes around the world is foaming at the mouth to see him win it. Which they were but I’ll get back to that. Do they try and keep him strong? Not even a little. He is booked down for the rest of 2013 including a fn mind blowing storyline of him “giving up” on his vendetta against the McMahons and willingly joining the Wyatts. But people love him so much that somehow he comes out of all this over on a level that rivals Stone Cold Steve Austin. Not quite Austin levels consistently yet but he’s closer than anyone since Cena. Without getting the big push and basically being booked down, that’s the crazy thing about all this. Just imagine if they were behind him.
So we come to the Royal Rumble and they have the perfect story handed to them on a silver platter. Daniel Bryan loses to Bray Wyatt in the 1st match and wins the Royal Rumble in the last match, shades of Bret Hart at WrestleMania 10. The YES! chants and his reactions were at main event level, chants had hit the mainstream, THE TIME WAS NOW! Slow burn over. Done. It worked, despite themselves it worked and the world was ready to get on the road to WrestleMania with Daniel Bryan. He and Randy Orton have awesome matches; they were ready to have a classic that would have rivaled Savage vs. Steamboat. Like I say watch it back, the crowd was ready and Daniel Bryan was ready. But they didn’t do it. The culmination to this 2 year slow burn was Daniel Bryan winning the Royal Rumble and then winning the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania XXX. The show would go off the air with Daniel Bryan on the shoulders of the guys and surrounded by the locker room with 70,000+ chanting YES! YES! YES! YES! YES!
It was right there and for some stupid fucking reason they don’t do it. I know Batista agreed to come back and has a movie coming out but forcing him into the main event that was earned by Daniel Bryan is a big mistake. He is the perfect heel to counter Daniel Bryan, that’s your money feud for 2014/15. They can’t honestly believe that he needs to be a good guy to get people to support the movie. All he needs to do is crush whatever he does and he is best at playing the kickass, cocky heel. The more entertaining he is the better and if he is a bad guy on WWE shows seeing him as a good guy on the big screen is a good sell. You give Big Dave a good win at Mania and then eventually he screws DB out of the title and chases him until finally getting a rematch at WrestleMania. Obviously easier said than done but fantasy booking aside, it just wasn’t Batista’s spot this year and the fans are letting everyone know. I feel bad for Batista because I am a fan of him and it’s not his fault but they gotta go with it and let him do what he does best. Then after fans have got all the boos out of their system he can have a big face run.
Now after Elimination Chamber where Daniel Bryan once again closed a PPV getting screwed out of the title, it looks like he will not be winning the title in the main event of WrestleMania. A win over HHH would be exactly what the doctor ordered if YES!amania wasn’t running wild and ready to possibly get to that rarified air of overness only few have breathed. And now we have to listen to people say that this is all part of a “slow burn” since SummerSlam and the payoff will be a win at Extreme Rules. That would be complete bullshit and too little too late. So what, we wait another year of DB getting beat down to put him in the 2015 Royal Rumble he might win and then headline WrestleMania 31. I can’t see this momentum being sustained another year without being given “the big push” and that’s what I mean when I say being slow burned to a crisp. Maybe that’s their goal, to slow burn him to the point his heat dies down and they can say “See we told you he would fail and was a B+ player.” I really hope that is not the case but it might be because they aren’t stupid, they definitely see all this. Just pisses me off people saying we should just be patient when we have been agonizingly sitting patiently through this crap for 2 years. The payoff was the Royal Rumble and they pissed that away so now people are lashing out. They can still save it from being burnt beyond recognition but he somehow has to get into the WWE World Heavyweight Title match, have it be the main event, and win it. Obviously it could happen they can do whatever they want but it’s not very likely at this point. Even if it happens it won’t have the same impact it would have with a Royal Rumble win behind it, just makes me sick to know what they have wasted already and are so close to completely wasting.
We just have to hope that somehow Daniel Bryan closes the show as WWE World Heavyweight Champion. Every day it seems less and less likely but this kind of thing doesn’t happen very often so it’s worth hanging on to until the bitter end. I was really hoping they would use Hulk Hogan’s return to interact with Daniel Bryan and try to give him some legitimacy with the mainstream fans but nope. YESMovement seems to be what they’re going with but I love YESamania(Credit to Stone Cold Steve Austin), think it captures what’s happening perfectly and WWE is purposely missing the boat I just don’t fn get it. I won’t stop supporting Daniel Bryan and hopefully somehow, someway everyone will stick with him and he can sustain his momentum through the crap until they finally give him a real fucking shot. He is already as over with WWE fans as he is gonna get but now they need to build him so he can bring in new fans and bring back old ones. YES!