[2013-09-16-WWE-Raw] Daniel Bryan vs Roman Reigns

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Superstar Sleeze]

Daniel Bryan vs Roman Reigns w/ The Shield & Randy Orton - RAW 9/16/13

First off, this bothered me then and it still bothers me now was the incessant whining of the babyface commentators this or the Big Show match was a punishment match. If Bryan was the A+ player these people thought he was he would have to defend the title against challengers bigger than him. Handicap match, one arm tied behind his back, blindfold matches those are punishment matches. This is just a tough challenge for the undersized, but firey Bryan.

 

That all being said this is a great match and I think the best Bryan singles performance of this project on Free TV (I have the Orton street fight ahead of this overall in 2013). They establish Bryan's quickness and tenacity as the keys to success. He hones in on Reigns' leg and never really gives up on it and Reigns to his credit sells for the majority of the match. All you had to do was throw in a Shining Wizard and I would have thought this was a Mutoh match from 2001. Bryan was great with his barrage of Dragon Leg screws and kicks. I especially loved the inverted Indian deathlock (think Liger) and then him coming down to reign elbows on Reigns. It showed his focus on strategy, but also his intensity. Reigns takes over at this point with a huge Axe Bomber, which is a perfect heel transition because you are hitting from behind and it is violently wicked. When Bryan hits a knee lift, it is right back to the leg and when Reigns tries to stymie Bryan with a knee lift it is immediately a chop block to a leg lace. That is the type of struggle missing from a lot of matches. Great stuff. Bryan gets another of offense with a drop toehold into the middle turnbuckle and a missile dropkick, but Reigns catches him on his diving elbow driving him into the apron and throwing him into barricade in a very nice bump. Bryan crashes and burns on diving headbutt, but kicks out at 2. Bryan's hope spots feel more like he is struggling through pain rather than turning it off. It is his best FIP so far, but again still much better on offense. "You go where I tell you. This is A+. You are just B+" - Roman Reigns, Da Man! Here comes Bryan flying off with a clotheslines and YES! kicks before Reigns quashes that with a true Samoan Drop. REIGNS HOWLS~! Bryan evades and a roll-up, no. Big kick to head, nada.

 

Bryan WIPES ROLLINS OUT WITH A HUGE DROPKICK. The back of Rollins' head cracked against the announce table. Nasty. Dropkick to Reigns and dropkick to Ambrose. Big clothesline by Reigns only to fall prey to the YESLOCK. Orton in and triggers DQ. They beat down Bryan until the locker room makes the save, which is a big deal at this point in the story arc because the locker room had since feared for their jobs from The Authority and this was the first time they rallied around Bryan. The more I watch Bryan the more I see a throwback to old WWF style of booking babyfaces very strong in the ring. There is very little time where Bryan is selling for extended periods of time. He is always peppering in hope spots and he always feels like he is on offense. Whereas, Cena builds his matches around selling and now extended comebacks. I need to watch more Bryan, but off hand I prefer Cena. Reigns was awesome in this as a badass monster. It was a little too back & forth at times, but I liked the leg psychology and thought Reigns gave a strong performance. ***3/4

[dawho5]

I honestly wish I could watch the WWE matches without any commentary. It's probably the weakest aspect of their presentation. JBL is atrocious and Cole is and always has been completely useless. Post Summerslam JBL has been ridiculous as far as going from heel commentator back to Cole's buddy loving the matches back to heel commentator endlessly. It's very similar to the Triple H still needing to get cheers by messing with Heyman to the crowd's delight even though he is THE heel in the main program. It's so fucked. As far as the Bryan selling/offense dichotomy goes, I will always prefer Bryan's work in ROH or Japan to his WWE work on a style basis. But watching part of his WWE run it's really noticeable that he's one of the few guys who can make their matches really stand out despite how vanilla they all become after seeing about five. I think that's a huge part of why he got over as fast as he did.

 

As far as this match goes, I thought it was Reigns best performance so far. He did just the right amount of selling and putting Bryan's offense over while still looking like a badass. The back and forth is an unfortunate side effect of having a match in the WWE. Closing stretch is going to be unnecessarily back and forth. I do like how in Bryan matches they will a lot of the time have the opponent duck the head kick after the chest kicks only for Bryan to work back into the head kick from something else. It's always been a bit of psychology that I love.