Damn You, WWE! You made me do this!
First you sign Bryan Danielson, darling of the indy wrestling scene, away from Ring of Honour and let him sit at home for the better part of six months. Then you create NXT seemingly as the best way to get him, now known as Daniel Bryan, over...only for he to be among the first guys cut.
Bryan's absence is only for a week or so, as he returns to NXT to fued with...announcer Michael Cole. Wow! There's a Wrestlemania Main Event for you! Maybe it could be a 1-hour Iron Man match.
So, the first season of NXT comes to an end and they announce...uh...somebody...as the winner (and not even Jennifer Hudson's fiance). So where do they go from here? On last week's Raw, all of the NXT contestants rushed the ring, taking out C.M. Punk and the Straight Edge Society as well as John Cena.
But they didn't stop there, attacking several members of the ringside officials and tearing up the ring area. In the aftermath of the segment, while some derided it as "NXT"-WO, most fans decided it was perhaps the best angle they'd seen in a while. I think because it felt very unexpected and there wasn't a "Okay, this will happen and then this will happen and then that will happen." The road from A to B didn't feel like it would be a straight line.
Amid the carnage, Daniel Bryan choked out ring announcer Justin Roberts, going so far as to use Roberts' own tie.
Apparently, Bryan crossed some sort of line with the attack. On Friday night, it was announced the WWE had released Daniel Bryan/Bryan Danielson. As one might expect, the Internet (or at least the wrestling fan portion) has gone 67 different versions of batsh!t, with half the posts I've read declaring it to be a complete work, expecting the other NXT competitors to be "future endeavoured" over the weekend as well, only to return to further vengeance this Monday. The other half, meanwhile, the half that believe that Danielson was released due to either Mattel or Linda McMahon's Senate campaign likening Danielson's attack to the Benoit tragedy of some years ago, gave the WWE a "thumbs down" at releasing Danielson just at the point where the NXT story was about to take off, especially for the reasons rumoured.
And so, with Danielson probably returning to Ring of Honour (or perhaps taking his chances in a Hogan/Bischoff-ruled TNA, where he'll end up being the Dean Malenko of 2010) it looks as if his run in WWE was, to steal a lyric from the Coldplay frontman he slightly resembles, "cursed missed opportunities".
And so, I'm going to don my "fantasy booker" cap and tell you how I think Bryan Danielson should have been booked by the WWE Powers-that-be.
(And for you whose groaning I hear...just remember, on Friday night I said you could avoid this if I got 3 or more comments on my blog. I got a big fat goose-egg so you got nobody to blame but yourselves.)
First of all, keep the name Bryan Danielson. (Sure, the average WWE mark won't know him but then we're not booking to appeal to them. They're too busy b!tching about Cena being champion.) Secondly, the first second they can put him on TV, do it.
His character wouldn't be rocket science. He'd be the darling of the indy circuit that smarks already knew him as. He could talk about travelling 100 miles to wrestle in front of 25 people for no money. The WWE could probably drop a few bucks to get some of the indy footage of Danielson and broadcast it during the vignettes shown during his early days in the organization, and put him over as a guy who loves what he does. Maybe he could even sit down and reminisce about wrestling on the indy circuit (maybe name drop some other indy wrestlers).
During his early matches, Danielson should be booked as a no-nonsense solid wrestler. Not a sports entertainer, a wrestler. I mentioned Dean Malenko earlier (in reference to him being a solid wrestler who would be misused in Hogan/Bischoff's TNA) and I think that's the gimmick he should go for (save getting more of a push than Malenko did). Maybe have him battle guys like Regal and Finlay in his early matches to show he can hang with those kind of guys.
At first I was thinking he should feud with C.M. Punk, prior to the Straight Edge Society. Have Punk say he's not impressed with Danielson's indy past, since he's got one of his own.
But I also think Danielson and either Swagger or even better Drew McIntyre would make for a good program. Think about it, McIntyre's storyline is that he's the one Mr. McMahon has groomed to be the next big thing. He never had to work the indies (although Drew Galloway did wrestle in the U.K. beginning in 2003) so that would make him feel he's superior to Danielson. It'd be the classic spoiled rich kid who gets where he is because of who he knows vs. the hard working up-and-comer, who's had to work his way to the top.
I think Jericho would have been a good opponent for Danielson. He has the same indy background as Danielson has, but he's established as one of the WWE's top stars now, and wouldn't want to have to share the spotlight with this new kid on the block. He could belittle Danielson's indy background doing the ol' "You travelled 100 miles? Well, I travelled 110 miles!" Jericho could then tell Danielson his past exploits don't mean anything and he's got to get past Y2J if he expects to succeed here in the WWE.
Just a few ideas. Anything had to be better than what the WWE did with Danielson.
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