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A complete bust?
Believe it or not, that is the term fans have been using to describe Daniel Bryan's current run in the WWE and the sentiment was echoed by The Miz during a July 17th edition of SmackDown Live. Of course not everyone agrees that Bryan's latest run is a total bust, but there is becoming a larger and larger mountain of evidence to prove otherwise.
With that being said and his performance now becoming a focal point of Bryan's storyline with The Miz, here are five reasons why The A lister is right about Daniel Bryan's current run in The WWE. As always, let us know your opinion in the comments below and tell us what you think Bryan's lowest moment has been so far.
#5 Dream match let down
There's nothing quite like a long awaited dream match, and while many in the WWE Universe thought it would never happen, Daniel Bryan and AJ Styles finally had theirs on the SmackDown Live after WrestleMania 34.
Unfortunately for the WWE Universe, it ended without a decisive winner when Shinsuke Nakamura attacked both superstars.
Of course its hard to blame WWE for protecting this match for much later on, especially since Styles versus Bryan was a dream match for so long, but the decision was the start of several troubling ones for WWE that caused Bryan to lose his momentum. Not only that, it also lead to one of the worst storylines of Bryan's current WWE run.
#4 Being eliminated By Big Cass in the GRR match
Another bad moment in Daniel Bryan's latest run with WWE was when the company decided to have Bryan be eliminated by Big Cass after entering as number one and lasting 76 grueling minutes.
With that being said, not only did WWE play with fans hearts by having him come so close to winning the whole thing, they also had him eliminated by a guy that was fired a month later.
If nothing else, WWE's booking of Bryan in this match cost him a lot of momentum and really upset fans in the process.
If WWE didn't want Bryan to go the distance and win the whole thing, they really should have brought him in later in the match and had him eliminated by someone that they could rely on for him to have a good program with.
#3 Storyline with Big Cass
Putting an up and comer against Daniel Bryan seems like a good idea on paper, but it turned out to be a complete disaster when The WWE decided to do so with Bryan and Big Cass.
Of course a lot of that had to do with WWE making fun of Bryan's size and allowing Cass to do a segment with a midget posing as Daniel Bryan, but it didn't get much better from there.
In the end, Bryan got his heat back by beating Big Cass by submission at back to back pay per views and he did move on to bigger and better things afterwards, but the fact that WWE would put him in that kind of storyline to begin with is disgusting. They should have honestly had more respect for Bryan's character and not wasted his time with height jokes.
#2 Losing to The Bludgeon Brother at Extreme Rules
Daniel Bryan's loss at Extreme Rules is a tough one to defend.
On one hand, it helped set up the eulogy segment with The Miz later that week on SmackDown Live, but it came at the expense of Bryan being handed a clean loss.
On the other hand however, WWE did do their best to make Bryan look like a bad ass underdog in defeat, but it wasn't enough to make fans forget his shortcomings as of late.
Another problem with the whole thing is the fact that he lost to The Bludgeon Brother, which only made Bryan's stock fall further and further down. In fact, seeing Bryan take the pin from The Bludgeon Brother instead of Kane made absolutely no sense and kind of showed just how lackadaisical WWE is being with Bryan right now.
#1 Eliminated from The Gauntlet match by The Miz
SmackDown Live held a gauntlet match to determine who would face AJ Styles for The WWE Title at Extreme Rules and made Daniel Bryan the first entrant in the contest. It started off promisingly enough with Bryan defeating Big E Langston and outsmarting Samoa Joe to get him counted out, but then things took a turn for the worst.
The Bludgeon Brothers, who confronted Bryan during his entrance for the gauntlet match returned and laid a brutal beat-down on the former champion before leaving him in a crumpled heap. The Miz than took that opportunity to rush into the ring, hit Bryan with The Skull Crushing Finale and eliminated him from the match.
Not only did the finish make no sense due to the fact that having a redo between Styles and Bryan would have been a great followup storyline wise, but also by the fact that they put him in a feud with The Bludgeon Brothers instead. In the end, it hurt the tag team division, hurt Byran's momentum and robbed fans of a rematch of a dream match all in one fell swoop.
Think about it! Wouldn't it be a much more reasonable idea to do a Bryan versus Styles rematch at Extreme Rules? WWE could have even had The Miz cost Bryan the match to get their feud started for SummerSlam and Bryan wouldn't have had to take a clean loss from a tag team in the process!
It's just so frustrating that WWE would have Bryan take a momentum killing loss like that. Of course some will claim that he was protected due to the fact that it was a 2 on 2 contest for much of the match and Bryan simply fell victim to a double team, but it still hurts Byran's momentum when you stack up the result to the other ones that Bryan has had.
