[2012-01-30-WWE-Raw] Daniel Bryan vs CM Punk

[cactus]

This is champion vs champion match and they both enter the arena with very little fanfare. Maybe Punk wasn't as over as I would of liked to believe in 2012. 

As one can expect, this is very technical match and both guys work well of each other. Bryan is the overly excited quasi-face heel, celebrating his small victories like he's won the Royal Rumble. He goes to work on Punk's arm. He stretches it out and stomps on wrist, ala William Regal. There's a cool callback to this later in the match, when Punk has to change arms when he attempts to hit his corner bulldog. They brawl outside the ring with duelling uppercut exchanges. Just when Punk is about put away Bryan, Chris Jericho  appears and attacks Bryan. Punk is disqualified and Bryan sits on the entrance ramp and celebrates in an over the top fashion.

★★★½

[ShittyLittleBoots]

It's the first singles meeting between the two since 2005, and it's kinda cool that now they're the World Champions in the biggest wrestling company in the world facing off. It's a very neat little tease of what was about to come between them later on in the year, too. A helluva TV-match w/ compelling wrestling all the way through. Bryan is all kinds of awesome on the offense w/ terrific strikes, some Regal-esq work with those knee drops to the face and continuing working the hand & arm while having that knee on the face of Punk -- him twisting & bending Punk's arm all over the place was of course extremely enjoyable, and Punk's selling is really good, unsurprisingly. I really liked how he had to switch to the better arm in that signature move-combo of his in that running knee into the bulldog one. The finish w/ Jericho kinda comes just when the match was kicking into another gear, but hey, I can't really complain about it knowing that Bryan & Punk got to have those PPV matches later on in 2012. Like I said, this more than did its job as a teaser for those matches that would eventually happen. ***3/4