The first part of trying to explain any special interest to a newcomer is a point of reference. For this I will go back to 1999. Not for any specific reason, but this is the time when wrestling was at it's most main stream appeal, and this man was at the top of the mountain, Stone Cold Steve Austin.
You may recognize him as not only is he a wrestler but he's a movie and television star. Now Stone Cold was one of the most popular wrestlers of all time and one of the four people who have been the face of the WWE (Hulk Hogan, Stone Cold, The Rock, and John Cena), which was then the WWF. Steve Austin rose to the spotlight after a Wrestlemania match with Bret The Hitman Hart, and gained a catchphrase with his promo (when they talk on the mic) when he said "Austin 3:16 says I just whipped your ass!" And BOOM! Steve Austin was the biggest bad asses on your TV. He had found his character. Steve Austin raised to the height of his fame when he started feuding with the evil boss of the WWE, Vince McMahon, who was leading the stable (team of wrestlers) known as The Corporation. The Corporation's sole job was to throw a wrench in anyone's plans and to control the WWE Championship (that gold belt they all fight over. This one had an eagle on it.) Steve was quite a nuisance to The Corporation, who didn't want him to be champion, but Steve was "one tough SOB" (son of a bitch for you more PG folk) and he rose above all and became a fighting champion multiple times. And he was the hottest thing in the industry, sold more merchandise than any other wrestler, and the fans loved him!
Cut to 2006. The WWE decided to revive ECW (a former wrestling company known as Extreme Championship Wrestling that went out of business and was purchased by the WWE) as a new branded show and with that came an indie darling (an independent wrestler that is well loved in the independent wrestling scene) from Chicago named Cm Punk. Punk was a straight edge (punk rocker, no drinking, no drugs) wrestler and one of the best wrestlers and talkers in the business. Now there's a whole other article we could have on Cm Punk but for this purpose we are going to jump to 2009. Enter Daniel Bryan, another indie darling (remember from before.) Daniel Bryan and Cm Punk, friends in real life, are two amazing wrestling talents. They traveled the world on the independent circuit and are now working for the WWE, the end all be all and biggest wrestling company in the world. Now we jump again (stay with me!) to 2011.
Cm Punk is fed up with his creative (the stories the writers write for the wrestlers) path in WWE. His contract is going to expire on the night of the PPV known as Money in the Bank. At this point Cm Punk had become popular enough that Vince McMahon knew he was a draw (what they say when a wrestler pulls in a lot of money via ticket sales and merchandise) and offered Cm Punk a contract that was too good to pass up. Cm Punk cut a promo known as a worked shoot. A work is a wrestling term that means predetermined and a shoot means real, or honest. So basically Cm Punk was told to go out and tell the crowd how he really felt to advance his story. What follows is the historic promo known as the pipe bomb.
This sky rocketed Cm Punk's already growing stardom and it came down to a match at Money in the Bank where Cm Punk defeated John Cena for the WWE Championship (this one spins like a spinner rim on a car) and he ran out of the arena "quitting" the company. Now Cm Punk would go on to lose the title when he returned the next month but would win it back at a later PPV and go on to have the longest title reign in the modern era of the WWE. During that time he would be screwed over time and time again by the people running the company and booking the matches. This is a shoot (remember from earlier?) not just a storyline, although they used it for that too. You see, Cm Punk and Daniel Bryan didn't match the normal professional wrestler. They were smaller and faster wrestlers versus the people with big ol' muscles like John Cena, but they are better and more entertaining wrestlers than any of those big men were. More importantly, the fans loved them! And you see something else happened at the Money in the Bank PPV.
So the concept of Money in the Bank is a 6 man (sometimes more) ladder match where the winner is the one who pulls down the Briefcase suspended above the ring. What's in that briefcase? A contract for a championship title match that can be redeemed at any time, 24/7. Usually this occurs after a champion has had a grueling match and is barely able to stand after. Then the person with the briefcase comes out, hands it to the ref, the match starts, and 1 . 2 . 3 . The tired champ loses the match because he can't beat the fresh challenger. Well at Money in the Bank Daniel Bryan won the ladder match and would go on to win the secondary World Heavyweight Title (they had two at the time, this one was a big gold belt.) Now we jump to April 1st 2012, to Wrestlemania 28. Before we go too in depth here I first need to explain something about wrestling fans. In the business, huge wrestling fans are known as marks. Now there is a split in the wrestling fan base, the casual fans, and the internet fans (IWC Internet Wrestling Community.) Now a wrestling mark that is just a little too smart to the business is called a smark. Basically a wrestling fan that will let it's opinion be heard in a snarky way, usually by complaining on the internet.
Now we come to the topic of part time wrestlers. What is a part time wrestler? A perfect example is The Rock. The Rock was a huge wrestling star and went onto mainstream success in the movie industry and is now one of the biggest action stars of our generation. However he still likes to dip his toe back into wrestling from time to time. This is a part time wrestler. Now don't get me wrong, wrestling fans LOVE The Rock. We grew up watching him on TV and he earned the ability to become a part time wrestler. Same thing with another wrestler like Chris Jericho, who comes and goes from time to time. The difference between Jericho and The Rock is Jericho will work the house shows (non televised wrestling shows that take place during the days between wrestling events) as well as all of the television tapings and PPVs. The Rock will only do select television episodes and the PPVs. Granted it's hard to argue that The Rock hasn't earned this position (another wrestler who has this schedule is Brock Lesnar, current WWE champion) but a problem with these part time wrestlers, is they are generally veterans who have been in the business for a long time, and are stealing the spots that could be used for the younger talent. These kind of moves make it seem like the WWE has no faith in their younger talent, and have to keep bringing back the older wrestlers to sell shows. This is something that smarks (and also the younger wrestlers) aren't too fond of.
So now we go back to Wresltemania 28. The Rock is stealing the main event with John Cena, Cm Punk is delegated to earlier in the show in a match with Chris Jericho, while Daniel Bryan is opening the show in a title match in which he loses in 18 seconds.
That's right, 18 seconds. Now this is where this extremely long story kicks into over drive and I'm going to try to move through this as quickly (but thoroughly) as possible. The story of Daniel Bryan goes like this, the girl he kissed in that video was AJ Lee, and Daniel Bryan blamed his loss on her and she was playing an unhinged character at the time. She caused Daniel Bryan to become increasingly angry and he was eventually sent to anger management with another wrestler named Kane in a series of hilariously odd video segments. These two eventually hashed out their differences and became a tag team called Team Hell No, but not before Daniel Bryan was dubbed as The Goat, because he was growing a long beard and looked like a hairy goat. Even though a great wrestler was trapped in this goofy gimmick, he became insanely popular, especially with children, which the WWE makes their bread and butter on nowadays. Bryan also had a chant that was super fun and easy. He simply raised his hands and chanted YES! And everyone loved doing it. Oh and by the way, Cm Punk lost his championship to The Rock.
We jump to 2013. The Royal Rumble is the first PPV of the year and it's at this PPV that Cm Punk lost his championship to The Rock. John Cena also wins the Royal Rumble match ,a 30 man battle royale where if you are thrown out of the ring and both feet touch the ground you are eliminated. The last one standing gets a main event title match at Wrestlemania. So now we are approaching Wrestlemania 29. The Rock is once again in the main event as champion against John Cena and Cm Punk is facing the Undertaker. The Undertaker has been undefeated at Wrestlemania and every year someone tries to beat the streak, this year it was Cm Punk (who lost) and this match was the show stealer and the one every wrestling fan actually wanted to see. While he did steal the show, Cm Punk wasn't happy about it. Why? Because it's always been his dream to main event Wrestlemania and this was just another year where he should have been there and was shoved aside for something else. You could imagine the frustration.
Now we jump to August 18th 2013 to Summerslam. The show the WWE considers to be their mini Wrestlemania. Punk once again steals the show in a match with the part timer spectacle known as Brock Lesnar (mentioned before) and Daniel Bryan was given a title match by the champion John Cena himself. The entire PPV impressed and ended with the underdog Daniel Bryan finally capturing the WWE championship (no longer a spinning belt) only to immediately be betrayed by the future owner of the company and also wrestling legend, Triple H. Daniel Bryan was robbed of the title when Randy Orton cashed in his Money in the Bank contract (remember from before) and with the help of Triple H stole the title from Bryan. This started the story line of The Authority. So you remember a while back when I was talking about Stone Cold and The Corporation? Picture that exact situation except with a shorter hairier wrestler in the Stone Cold role. What proceeded was a half year long struggle for Daniel Bryan to try and win back his championship and being consistently interrupted by The Authority who referred to him as a B+ player, despite being the most popular wrestler on the roster among the fans. Now you're probably saying to yourself "This is all just a wrestling story right?" Well sort of. It was definitely part of a story, but there was also some truth to what was happening.
You see the ones running WWE (Vince McMahon) seem to be very stubborn from a fan's perspective. The booking of Daniel Bryan through this period really showed that Vince really didn't see Daniel Bryan as the new IT guy and they constantly tried to force him out of the story line much to the fans' dismay. Bryan was constantly the best match of any show and the fans were very vocal about their love of his talent and their wish to see him succeed ever since he was robbed of his title after Summerslam. Bryan (and Cm Punk) were constantly being pushed away from the championship title and put into story lines that went no where and just frustrated fans, the paying customers, and now we skip ahead to 2014. Once again we are about to lead into the Royal Rumble, but first the WWE had to frustrate us some more with Bryan. Bryan was forced into the heel (Heel is wrestling talk for bad guy, the good guys are called baby face or just face) faction known as the Wyatt Family. A cult like cast of characters. This angered fans because it was once again taking Bryan into a dead end story line and turning him into a Heel made no sense since he was the most popular Baby Face in the company. And then the most incredible thing I've ever seen in wrestling happened. Remember that YES chant I mentioned before? It really became popular with the people that were fans of Daniel Bryan.
As you can see, that would be everybody. Bryan turned on the Wyatt family after only a week or two, and the explanation simply seems to be because the WWE realized their mistake by turning Daniel Bryan Heel. And now we enter the Royal Rumble yet again. Daniel Bryan opened the show in a match against Bray Wyatt, the leader of the Wyatt Family. Daniel Bryan lost, but they put on an amazing match (a five star match to wrestling fans) but most fans were okay with the loss because Bray Wyatt was also becoming popular and later in the night was the Royal Rumble match (remember the winner goes to the main even of Wrestlemania) and we were all sure that the WWE had finally heard the voice of the fans and surely Daniel Bryan would win and go on to Wrestlemania and become the WWE champion again and there would be confetti and cheers and history would be made. Enter Batista. Former full time wrestler who was now a part time wrestler, and the actor best known as Drax the Destroyer in the Marvel smash hit Guardians of the Galaxy (although the movie released after this) returned to the WWE, and not only did HE win the Royal Rumble match, but Daniel Bryan wasn't even in the match!! Naturally, fans were upset.
Then we come to the day after the Royal Rumble. Word spread very quickly that Cm Punk had quit, and by quit I mean he walked into Vince McMahon's office and told him he was going home. Now we didn't know what happened for about ten months but the story finally came out when Punk did a fellow wrestler's (and his personal friend) podcast and told his whole story. His story gave some insight to the backstage of the WWE life and shed some light how guys like he and Daniel Bryan were viewed. This is required listening.
So now we go to the next month's PPV known as Elimination Chamber. The main event consists of six wrestlers in a steel cage with four pods at each corner post of the ring. The match works like this, two wrestlers start in the ring, the other four wait in the pods. The four wrestlers are slowly released into the match after a set amount of time and when one of them get pinned or submit they are eliminated. The last one standing wins the belt. Naturally Daniel Bryan was one of the competitors in the match. Along with another big fan favorite known as Cesaro. And guess who won?! Not either one of these two. So again fans were enraged. Now we are coming to Wrestlemania. Not just any Wrestlemania but Wrestlemania 30 (XXX since they use roman numerals) and there were some issues. With Cm Punk gone the WWE was down one major star and the show had to be saved. Well a long story short, Cm Punk was supposed to face Triple H and since he was gone they decided to put Daniel Bryan in that match instead. Not only that, they decided to kill two birds with one stone and FINALLY make the fans happy. Who ever won the match between Triple H and Daniel Bryan would be added into the main event championship match, making it a triple threat match, which is just a fancy way to say three wrestlers. So Daniel Bryan beat Triple H in the first match of the show, which was an amazing match. Then he went on to win in the main event and FINALLY become the WWE Champion fair and square, and the fans celebrated. Then tragedy struck, but first a little happiness.
Daniel Bryan married his fiance (and fellow wrestler) Brie Bella after Wrestlemania. Then shortly after the wedding, his father sadly passed away. Unfortunately, as with the hectic life of a wrestler, the show must go on and Bryan was quickly back to work. He defended his title at the next PPV (called Extreme Rules) against his former Team Hell No partner Kane, but the bad news kept on coming. After winning the match it was announced that Daniel Bryan needed neck surgery. So he stepped away to have his surgery and recover. Fortunately the WWE didn't strip him of his title as was expected. He had his surgery. . . but he didn't come back for the rest of the year. There were complications with his recovery and despite the WWE willing to wait out his recovery, they were forced to strip Daniel Bryan of the title anyway. Daniel Bryan was out of serious competition until 2015. And that brings us to the 2015's Royal Rumble.
The fans were no doubt excited to have Daniel back and if you remember last year, Bryan wasn't even in the Rumble match and the fans were calling for riots. Well this year Bryan was actually in the rumble and fans were hoping the WWE would do the right thing and have him go all the way this year and win to rightfully reclaim his title at Wrestlemania again. Before we move on we need to discuss the time in which Bryan was out. During that time there were three superstars who rose to prominence. They were once a tag team known as The Shield. Their names are Dean Ambrose, Roman Reigns, and Seth Rollins. Together they were three of the most popular wrestlers in the company. They achieved so much success that the only option was to split them up into singles wrestlers. So they did. Now Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins soared in popularity. However Roman Reigns struggled to find the same success as a singles competitor but there was an even bigger problem. Roman Reigns fits the profile of that big muscle man that the WWE loves. He has a great look, but his talking and wrestling skills just weren't on par. For months it was rumored that the WWE wanted to have Roman Reigns win the Royal Rumble and go on to beat the WWE champion (currently Brock Lesnar: See part timers) and hope that the fans would love it but the smarks were leaning more in favor of Ambrose and Rollins. Also they still really hoped Daniel Bryan would be better by then and come back to win. However if that wasn't the case there were a handful of other options that the fans might have been okay with. Dolph Ziggler, Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins, Cesaro, but we all REALLY wanted Daniel Bryan to be there! Luckily for us he was, unlucky for us however . . .
Daniel Bryan entered into the Rumble at position number ten and was eliminated after only ten minutes. Fans started to boo, and they didn't stop until the show was over. There were a few glimmers of hope however. When one of the names mentioned above entered there were some cheers. However the WWE made sure to quickly eliminate all of the fan favorites, and in a way that felt like it was rubbing it in the fan's faces. They were literally picked up like rag dolls and thrown lazily over the ropes. They might as well have pointed in our faces and said "Ha ha." Then Roman Reigns went on to win in what was a mediocre display of action. The fans had had enough. The boos were almost deafening. This was the second year in a row that the debut PPV of the year was one of the worst shows imaginable. Both years only had one single match that was amazing, and the rest of the shows, especially the two rumble matches, were beyond a disappointment. Now I'm sure a lot of people are wondering, why would this matter? It's just people being babies that their favorite wrestler didn't win a pre-determined match. Well I'll tell you why it matters.
First there's the obvious, the fans are paying customers. The WWE is seeming to go out of it's way to anger their paying customers. It's entertainment, and Vince McMahon himself always says that the WWE is not wrestling, it's sports entertainment which already angers a lot of fans who like the WWE because they like wrestling. There is also the fact that the WWE is a publicly traded company. When you're a publicly traded company, and also an entertainment company, it's pretty important to make sure your fans are happy, since that's what your business is based on. Then there's the factor of the WWE Network. The WWE launched their Netflix like service in early 2014 and offers the ability to watch the PPVs live on their network which is only $9.99 a month. On top of the live PPVs you get the entire back catalog of all of their past PPVs as well as PPVs from other wrestling companies that they own (ECW and WCW) and a lot of original programming. It's really a great deal for the fans but apparently it's been an issue for the WWE. The network has really under-performed compared to their expectations and it's unclear on if they are losing money with the whole deal. So the WWE obviously wants to sell as many subscriptions to their network as possible. How do they do this? By reminding us every three minutes on their television shows (RAW and Smackdown!) about the benefits of the network and how awesome it is and that its all for a low low price of how much? $9.99. The price actually became so much of a joke that there is a $9.99 shirt. This is not a joke. Guess how much the shirt cost?
Now I don't think that everyone is necessarily angry that Roman Reigns won the Royal Rumble. I personally don't think he was ready this year to win and go become the champion (assuming that's still the plan) but everyone wanted their underdog story with Daniel Bryan since his first title reign was cut short. Now the fans just feel betrayed and cheated and like the WWE doesn't care about their fan base so why should the fans care? Then the day after the Rumble a hash tag was trending on Twitter. #CancelWWENetwork. That's right, the fans were so mad that they decided to do something better than just complain online. They spoke with their wallets, and they spoke loudly. So loud that they actually crashed the cancellation page for the network. Now for a publicly traded company that has already struggled to gain network subscriptions, this is actually a big hit to their public image. Now let's be honest. I'm sure not enough people canceled to put network under, but enough cancelled or even mentioned it to make a statement, and that statement cost them some stock points. Will this fix anything? No, the WWE will do what they think is best whether it is or not. For example, here's an interview with Vince McMahon where he buries some of the fans favorite talent and claims he's not out of touch, while making himself sound most certainly out of touch.
Wrestling fans often think "Man, if I was running the WWE (or any wrestling company) things would be so much better!"and this is the first time where I really feel like the fans actually do have a better grasp of what would make a better show than the people in charge. Leading into Wrestlemania is always a critical time for the WWE and wrestling fans alike because everyone wants it to be the best show it can be since it's the biggest wrestling event in the world every year and honestly, the WWE should be kissing the asses of their fans just a little bit. Obviously they don't have to do everything the fans want because hey, the fans aren't the ones running the show, but they should be able to anticipate what the fans want and sense who they like (I mean we are only cheering for our favorites every week) and maybe not give us the obvious choice, but they know who we like enough to be able to still surprise us. So yes, wrestling fans should be mad, and sending a message with their dollars is an effective way of getting the WWE's attention. So in case you weren't a wrestling fan and interested in this story I hope I was able to explain it clearly enough for you. I know it was a long explanation but to tell a wrestling story you often have to go back to the beginning and this was a long tale of attrition.
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