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With WWE WrestleMania 34 on the horizon, we are building up to the event by taking a look at five key facts about the biggest matches at this year’s “Showcase of the Immortals”.
In this article, we focus on a match many people thought they would never see – Daniel Bryan & Shane McMahon vs. Sami Zayn & Kevin Owens.
Will D-Bry get the win on his return to action? Or will Zayn and Owens defeat the SmackDown Live management team to win their jobs back?
#5 Daniel Bryan hasn’t had a match for almost three years
Let’s get the obvious fact out the way first: Daniel Bryan is back! Two years after announcing his retirement and almost three years after his last match, the SmackDown Live General Manager was recently cleared to return to the squared circle.
“The Leader of the Yes Movement” last competed in a WWE ring on 14 April 2015 at a SmackDown taping, where he teamed with John Cena to defeat Cesaro & Tyson Kidd in a tag match.
Bryan had only just won the Intercontinental Championship in a seven-man ladder match at WrestleMania 31 and he was due to defend it against Bad News Barrett at the Extreme Rules PPV. However, he missed the next 10 months due to injury problems before he was forced to retire.
#4 Daniel Bryan has won four WrestleMania matches in a row
The lowest moment of Daniel Bryan’s in-ring WWE career came when he lost the World Heavyweight Championship in just 18 seconds against Sheamus in the opening match of WrestleMania XXVIII.
Since then, Bryan has won four matches in a row on “The Grandest Stage of Them All”, with the run starting at WrestleMania 29 when he teamed with Kane to defend the Tag Team titles against Dolph Ziggler and Big E.
His most famous victories came at WrestleMania XXX, where he defeated Triple H before going on to win the WWE title in the main event against Randy Orton and Batista, and then he was victorious in the Intercontinental Championship ladder match at WrestleMania 31.
#3 Sami Zayn & Kevin Owens have won 43.4% of their tag matches
Needless to say, Daniel Bryan and Shane McMahon have never teamed with each other in a tag match – but Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens have.
In fact, if you also take into account their days together pre-WWE as El Generico and Kevin Steen, the duo have teamed together in 23 televised matches during their careers, winning 10 times (43.4% win ratio).
For those hoping for a Bryan and Shane win at WrestleMania, you’ll be glad to hear that Zayn and Owens have lost all four tag matches they have appeared in since they defeated Randy Orton and Shinsuke Nakamura at Clash of Champions in December 2017.
#2 It was rumoured that Sami Zayn & Kevin Owens would be in the Battle Royal
Before Daniel Bryan was cleared and it became obvious that WWE was building towards a tag match between SmackDown’s management team and its most villainous duo, it was rumoured that Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens would appear in the Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal.
It would have been a significant demotion for Zayn and Owens to feature in the Battle Royal after leading the way with SmackDown’s main story over the last few months, and KO even jokingly posted a picture of a previous Battle Royal on Twitter with the caption “tape study”.
The conclusion to the long-running rivalry with Shane McMahon would have been very underwhelming if it led to Zayn and Owens competing in the Battle Royal, so it’s a good job Bryan was cleared!
#1 Shane McMahon is yet to defeat anyone since he returned in 2016
Shane McMahon returned to WWE in 2016 with an undefeated WrestleMania record of no losses and two victories (vs. X-Pac at WrestleMania XV and vs. Vince McMahon at WrestleMania X-Seven).
Since then, he has lost two matches at WrestleMania (vs. The Undertaker at WrestleMania 32 and vs. AJ Styles at WrestleMania 33), while he was defeated by Kevin Owens in the main event of Hell In A Cell in October 2017.
His only other matches since returning have come in five-on-five men’s elimination matches at Survivor Series, where his SmackDown team won in 2016 and lost in 2017. However, his 2016 victory came after he had been eliminated and he didn’t personally defeat anybody in the match, so he is still searching for his first pinfall or submission victory in almost a decade.
