That’s how that style was, especially with whoever the senior member on the totem pole is. The 6/3/94 finish famously had a cutoff spot from Misawa that then led to Kawada basically getting no offense in the rest of the match. It also happened in the 1/20/97 match when Misawa took over and it was basically for good.
That’s a way better way of dealing with stretch runs IMO, as the back and forth of modern matches leads to not selling bigger moves as well as the lead up to that stretch run in favor of quick momentum swings. Just doesn’t make much sense.
Again, what makes people think Bryan didn’t ask for the role he’s in currently? He seems to have autonomy over basically everything he wants to do, so there’s a good chance he wanted to go this route for now. Plenty of time for him to have the title run everyone thinks he should have.
A good match, solid stuff, but yeah, I think at the end of a damn four hour, forty minute show, things came up flat. Should have been a bigger moment, probably.
The issue right now is that there seems to be a bunch of folks getting highlighted who are also getting way too much exposure. Britt got overextended, so did Adam. Ruby lost whatever she had going for her in WWE (weird sentence). Jade needs to move on from her reign somehow. There needs to be a bunch of shakeups that just aren’t happening.