The Royal Stumble Jan 27, 2014

The Road To WrestleMania essentially begins at the WWE’s Royal Rumble where the winner of the 30-man battle royale goes on to main event the company’s biggest extravaganza and usually the idea is to put the most over star on the roster into the most important match of the year.

For those of us fans who have been watching week in week out, there can be no argument whatsoever that man is none other than The American Dragon, Daniel Bryan.



Every single week on either Raw or Smackdown, or at any PPV event, the pops this guy gets is beyond phenomenal. There truly isn’t a more popular superstar than Daniel Bryan on the WWE roster right now, and not even CM Punk or John Cena can garner such adoration and jubilation as Bryan does. However, we are constantly seeing him being booked in a way that leaves us scratching our heads as to exactly what direction the WWE is putting a guy who sends every crowd into a frenzy at every show.

This doesn’t just stop at Daniel Bryan either; cases can be made for the likes of Dolph Ziggler, whose entry into the Rumble last night, got a pop that was probably louder than the one Chris Jericho got last year. Yet Ziggler has been pushed way down the midcard and is jobbing to guys like Ryback and Fandango these days, despite the fact that one of the stand-out moments of last year came when he cashed in the Money In The Bank contract against Alberto Del Rio a day after WrestleMania 29 and won the World Heavyweight title to a cacophony of cheers.

A month or so later, WWE had Ziggler drop the title and he has descended into his current purgatory of midcard status since.

CM Punk is another superstar who has found himself in strange feuds since WrestleMania too, where the match of the year was undoubtedly his showdown with The Undertaker which absolutely and unequivocally eclipsed the main event card which was yet another boring title match between The Rock and John Cena.

Which brings me to my next point: this over-reliance on part-time and established stars.

Brock Lesnar being the first case to discuss.

The odd booking of Lesnar makes absolutely no sense because he returned to get defeated in feuds with John Cena and Triple H, and then disappeared into the wilderness for a while after an odd feud with CM Punk. Now he has reappeared to declare that he will be involved in the title picture.

So what is the direction here? Does Orton drop the title at Elimination Chamber so we get a match between Lesnar and Batista just so they can book it as “The Beast vs. The Animal”?

Batista is another case in point. He returned merely a week ago and immediately won the Royal Rumble despite a lacklustre showing where he looked physically exhausted after performing about three clotheslines and a spinebuster.

Most of us are fully aware that Batista is really only hanging around until his film The Guardians of the Galaxy arrives, and he will probably sail away into the sunset having yet another WWE championship reign under his belt and a fat cheque from Vince in his pocket. But is a match featuring Orton, Batista or Lesnar what anyone wants to see main event WrestleMania 30?.

Chris Jericho and Rob Van Dam, despite their part-time status, were more or less back with the company to put over the likes of Alberto Del Rio, Fandango and Ryback, who are all deadly dull performers in their own rights.

At the present time, we’re looking at a card which by all accounts is likely to feature the following matches:

Randy Orton vs Batista for the WWE Heavyweight Championship

John Cena vs Bray Wyatt

CM Punk vs Triple H

Cody Rhodes vs Goldust

Many people in favour of Daniel Bryan’s push to main event status are seething at rumours that Daniel Bryan’s opponent at WrestleMania 30 could be Sheamus, which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

There is also talk of Daniel Bryan facing The Undertaker and if any match is going to bring the absolute best out of Daniel Bryan and potentially steal the show, then it is a match between those two. However, there is also talk of Brock Lesnar facing The Undertaker so if that is the case, then where does this leave the WWE’s most popular superstar at the moment?

I think we fans can agree that we are now bored to death of John Cena and Randy Orton putting on dogshit matches

In an ideal world, Daniel Bryan’s moment to propel into the stratosphere should be at Wrestlemania 30 because there is literally no other star on the current roster apart from CM Punk who is a harder worker and who gets as big a reaction as Daniel Bryan.

We’ve also seen some of the best talent from NXT emerge in recent times with Bray Wyatt, who is without doubt one of the best heels currently in the business and who is an absolute wizard on the mic; and Roman Reigns looks more and more like a main event player every week with his dominant displays of strength and athleticism.

This reliance on the likes of Lesnar, Batista, Cena and Orton has now called the decisions of the WWE creative team into question, and last night at the Rumble, it seemed as if it was the last straw. And the groundswell of opinion to push Bryan onto the main event at WrestleMania 30 has already begun.

The WWE is treating its audience with contempt by continuing to ignore the likes of Bryan, Punk, Ziggler, Damien Sandow, Reigns and Wyatt and allow them to become the new blood of the WWE. They are the ones who will keep the content fresh and exciting, because I think we fans can agree that we are now bored to death of John Cena and Randy Orton putting on dogshit matches and Brock Lesnar occasionally turning up whenever he likes, to F5 whichever person he has been booked into a pointless feud with.

Read: Four fictional characters who would make great pro-wrestlers

The tide needs to turn, and the times have certainly changed where the IWC is vocalising its opinions more and more about what it wants to see and what it wants to pay for.

It should be plain as the big nose on Paul Levesque’s face that Daniel Bryan is “The Guy” at the moment, and we’d much rather be seeing the likes of CM Punk and Daniel Bryan taking eachother on in an Iron Man match than watching yet another stale dullfest between Orton and Cena where we can tell exactly which moves both performers are likely to do before they’ve even executed them.

If you look at an hour of programming on NXT compared to the absurdly long three hours of programming on Raw, you can see a vast gulf of difference in the quality of entertainment where you have a guy like Sami Zayn taking on Antonio Cesaro (another criminally booked performer who deserves much better) and putting on a five star match that could easily have won Match of the Night plaudits at a Slammy Awards ceremony if it had been on WWE television.

Who knows where the WWE will go from here, because the anger and fury that was vented on forums and social networks after last night’s Royal Rumble surely cannot be ignored for too long, particularly at a time when Raw is being beaten in the TV ratings by the likes of Pawn Stars and Duck Dynasty.

The format needs to change and the content needs to be freshened up, and at this time where it is so close to WrestleMania 30, an event that is being billed as the biggest event in WWE history, can they really afford to not give the fans exactly what they want?

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