Sean Liska

I wouldn't. Not if they're planning on doing it in the next few months. Screwing him over time and time again has made the crowd ravenous for his eventual triumph. When he wins, it's going to be one of the epic moments in company history, which it wouldn't have been last fall. As much at the internet hated him not winning last year, I think it could end up being the smart move. Mania is going to be a weekend-long lovefest with the guy. And Extreme Rules is going to be crazy.

I even think all of this talk of him not moving the needle is overblown. They trusted him to anchor the company during football season with Cena out. That's a huge show of faith. And ratings were fine, they were the same as last year with Cena around. HITC did very well, and that was the show presented as the blowoff to the feud. NOC didn't do well domestically but did fine internationally, and guess what, it was the day after the Mayweather fight. Battleground did really badly but it came across as a totally worthless throwaway show. He hasn't moved numbers like Jeff Hardy, but did CM Punk move a bunch of numbers? MITB2011 did a bit better than usual but not as much as the internet hype indicated. He didn't have a really good one until the Ryback HITC 15 months after the pipe bomb. It's really tough to move numbers for B-shows in this era of overexposure.

I don't think there are any ill intentions behind the HHH/McMahon promos towards Bryan, and I think people are overreacting to how casual fans will respond to it. Them calling Bryan short and ugly are just playing into their characters, and the idea is that the fans resent it and rally behind him. Maybe it's too inside. But people have been claiming these burials of Bryan since August, and he's more over than ever. So either he's just that impossible to bury, or the internet doesn't have its finger on the pulse of the normal fan.

I could see a CM Punk chant during a boring match when the crowd usually chants for JBL, but I don't think there will be hijacking if Bryan is prominently featured.

Seems foolish to take time off for financial reasons when the new TV deal could leave them swimming in more money than ever, right? They'll have to feel the positive effects of the new deal if they get what they're anticipating, I would think.

Here's another way of looking at it. Who in the past 8 years has gotten the type of push that everyone wants Daniel Bryan to get? Jeff Hardy did lots of jobs along the way. So did Edge. So did Punk. You can argue it's not the best way to create stars, but it's tough to say WWE hasn't gotten behind him when everyone gets treated the same way.

It's not "stealth" top guy booking when you get the most TV time of anybody over the summer (including being the first guy to beat the Shield and clean wins over Orton and Cena), 4 straight PPV main events, you're chosen to be the guy that carries the company when Cena goes down during football season, and even recently - your gauntlet match with the Wyatts and big angle afterwards takes up the last 40 minutes of RAW, and then your turn back face two weeks later gets the main segment of RAW and is presented as an epic moment. And the RAW the night after the Rumble is based around you with the big promo spot at the start of the show and being a key focus of the main event. No one has gotten a more sustained push over the past 7 months. Punk was feuding with Ryback and Axel in the micard for a while. Cena was feuding with Del Rio for a few months, lost clean at TLC, and is in the 4th most important match at Mania. Big Show had one month on top. Orton has been portrayed as a lackey that only wins because of HHH's help, and has had visual pinfall losses to Bryan several times. The only thing WWE has done that people don't like is delay his title win, but it's smart, because he only gets more over every week as people think he's being held down. When he finally wins, it's going to be an all-time epic moment, and Meltzer says it's coming.

In late 99, they were desperate for a new headline heel. Undertaker had been done to death in that role in the previous year, Foley was retiring, Rock was too popular to turn back, they didn't trust Big Show, etc. This was the period where they tried giving Billy Gunn a big singles push but it was clearly not going to work. Austin wouldn't work with Jarrett. You can blame HHH for the lack of a Jericho push, but read Jericho's book - there were plenty of issues between him and Vince anyways and he was certainly not going to be the guy at that time. What were their other options? Turning Test? Making Shane WWE champ?

It seems like the consensus is that he probably shouldn't replace Cena, but he should be given a chance as a top guy. And I think that's what has mostly happened. He headlined 4 PPVs, has been all over TV (including his music playing after his team won Monday, not Cena's), Dave is confident he'll get a title reign this year and has hinted it may be soon. He should be a CM Punk level guy for a long time, above the level of an Alberto Del Rio or Sheamus type. Outside of the unsatisfactory payoff to the Authority feud (and I think the payoff is still coming), why are people not ecstatic with Bryan's current place in WWE and his future with the company? If he can stay away from the concussions, we should have a bunch of great featured matches in our futures like the one with Bray at the Rumble. How crazy would such an idea have been three years ago?

So Meltzer today said that them keeping Bryan out of the Rumble was an intentional attempt to get people angry at the idea that he's being held down, and that they're booking an angle based on all of this internet uproar. He also said it's not a coincidence that Extreme Rules is in Seattle, which was originally scheduled to be elsewhere. Interesting times we're living in is all I'm saying.

People are mad that Bryan's not doing throwaway TV jobs to Del Rio and getting eliminated from the Rumble in 2 minutes?

I was responding to this -

Booing Mysterio is a disgrace, I don't care if he's been on top for 30 straight years.

I don't think they're trolling. I think they are completely tone deaf and lack self awareness. They wouldn't intentionally sabotage Sheamus, Langston, Batista, and Mysterio. They thought that match layout would work. And they likely won't concede that it didn't. They'll likely blame a rebel crowd. The old "vocal minority". We'll see tomorrow night if it's a vocal minority. My guess is that it is and Batista gets a very good response on RAW.

He is a top guy. He headlined 4 PPVs last year and was in the final segment on many RAWs, including two weeks ago. He's not surpassing Cena - nobody is. So if that's what you're looking for, it's going to be a disappointment, but that's a narrow way of looking at things. I wish people would just relax about Daniel Bryan and enjoy the fact that we're going to get years of great stuff out of him and WWE as long as he stays healthy. He's a made guy now. In a company that struggles to create headliners and is forced to produce a ton of content, he's a guy they know they can rely on. He's going to win the WWE title at some point, he's going to headline more PPVs, he's going to have lots of great matches on PPV and TV. People should be so excited about the next 5 years of Daniel Bryan/WWE collaboration instead of freaking out if he doesn't win the title at a specific PPV. I see him filling a similar role to 2002-2010 HBK. That's a good spot.

He used to calculate the amount of time it took for people to run to the ring at the Rumble and then list them in order in the Observer.

I don't mind the Outlaws sticking around. They look perfectly fine in the ring and I'm still a mark for Road Dogg's mic work. And bringing back old talent for the occasional run is basically the only way they can rotate in and out fresh characters like the old days.

Were CM Punk or Randy Orton there?

Of course he is. He's been wrong about the angle since the start. Almost everyone had this angle pegged for what it was from the start and Dave was writing about how perplexing it was for WWE to turn Daniel Bryan heel like it was a long-term thing. They didn't tease dissension between the Wyatts and Bryan in their very first match because this was planned to last six months.

Alvarez said that one plan is for the HHH/Punk stuff to continue through SummerSlam, with a Punk/Batista match on that show being the continuation of it. Which I like because Batista as a heel is a million times better than as a face. I know HHH has surprised us before, but after spending 7 months getting heel heat on him for this moment, I'd be shocked if the payoff isn't him losing at Mania. That would really be something.

If Rock wanted a 5-second win on RAW over HHH, Vince would make it happen. I doubt he has to worry about special clauses ensuring he gets a title run. Vince isn't going to not give Rock the WWE Title if he's willing to take it. Rock could hold that belt for two years and defend it every 6 months if he wanted.

If you just listened to Alvarez and read the Torch, you would have figured that WWE booked themselves into 2000 WCW-type business around a decade ago, and languished there since then like All Japan post-split. The constant negativity towards WWE since WM17 has never really stopped, it's numbing, people complaining about this not being the Attitude Era for 13 years now. And yet RAW this week did a hell of a number against football and the Rumble is already sold out and Mania will do a $10 million gate and probably big PPV business and they just sold out MSG for a house show.

I don't know that this is the case. Bryan's pretty clearly less over after months of being laid out and screwed over than he was immediately after Summerslam. How so? I haven't noticed a difference in how crazy the crowds go for him, unless you're talking about SummerSlam itself, which is a unique internet-based crowd.

You also have to consider that the other main feud WWE was pushing at the time was Steiner-HHH, so Benoit-Angle was seen as this symbol of all that was good, while Steiner-HHH was everything we were rejecting from Vince. It was fun at the time even if it doesn't hold up now, the crowd response was great, standing ovation for Benoit after the match, etc.

Not Michelle Beadle, apparently. Meltzer says they had a run too.