4 reasons why it was the right move to have Daniel Bryan retain the WWE Championship

As we all saw earlier, Daniel Bryan overcame all the odds to retain his WWE Championship inside the Elimination Chamber in a clean fashion. He came up against strong challenges from Randy Orton, Samoa Joe, Jeff Hardy, AJ Styles, and especially Kofi Kingston. It is quite unusual for a heel champion to retain the championship inside the Chamber in a clean fashion.

Bryan was the Iron Man of the match, but Kingston stole the show. Fans wanted Kofi to win, but ultimately, he could not kick out of the second running knee from Bryan. Even though Bryan played the role of a cowardly heel, he stepped up in the final part of the match and delivered a brilliant 12-minute-bout with Kofi Kingston.

However, after the match, most WWE fans were divided in the opinion that Daniel Bryan should not have retained the championship. But we feel it was indeed the right move. In this thread, we will take a look at four reasons why it was the right move to have Daniel Bryan retain the WWE Championship.

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#4 Daniel Bryan had to look strong before WrestleMania 35.

WWE's biggest mismanagement of heel champions comes in the form of booking them as a coward who can't win a match cleanly. With WrestleMania around the corner, it would be absurd to book Bryan as a coward, since it would kill his legitimacy as a champion.

Bryan needed help from Eric Rowan at the 2019 edition of Royal Rumble to retain his title against AJ Styles. That did no good to either Styles or Bryan. However, this win gives him more credibility than before - eliminating both Jeff Hardy and Kofi Kingston from the match.

Bryan survived five opponents and 36 minutes of hell inside the Elimination Chamber, and even kicked out of a Trouble in Paradise.

#3 Bryan just introduced a new belt

The entire purpose of building a new belt out of scratch was to have Daniel Bryan carry it around his shoulder and bragging how he protects the Nature by denying anyone else the opportunity to bring back the "non-eco friendly" WWE Championship.

This one itself is a convincing reason to not take the belt off Daniel Bryan, atleast until WrestleMania 35.

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#2 The other challengers have different storylines, little credibility, or other factors

All five challengers for the WWE Championship have some quality that stopped WWE to hand it to them at the moment.

Randy Orton and AJ Styles will start a non-title rivalry heading onto WrestleMania 35. Samoa Joe is still in a rivalry with Mustafa Ali. Jeff Hardy has little to no credibility at the moment. Kofi Kingston is still a part of the New Day and the WWE officials always refrained themselves from making one member of a stable, comprising "equal" members, more important than the others. Although the last one may sound absurd, WWE mostly follows that rule in a stringent manner.

#1 Bryan is in a new Creative direction

As said before, having Daniel Bryan lose the WWE Championship this early into his new Creative direction would be a shame and a huge injustice to The "New" Daniel Bryan. Bryan was slowly turning stale, and thus decided to switch dynamics and turn heel. This turn sparked a new direction for Daniel Bryan. The biggest problem associated with changing from such a huge babyface to a heel and not rewarding him accordingly is that he would fade to irrelevancy.

Just take the example of Shinsuke Nakamura. The King of Strong Style turned heel at WrestleMania 34 after his WWE Championship match against AJ Styles. However, since Nakamura never got rewarded for his turn, he became irrelevant, and is now not even a regular on PPVs. At the moment, Nakamura is in the undercards, allying with Rusev. We cannot allow the same to happen to Daniel Bryan.