The Road to WrestleMania is bumpy as hell.
The road “starts” at the end of the Royal Rumble, since the winner theoretically makes up half the WrestleMania main event. It actually started a little before 9 p.m. MST at Elimination Chamber — when the WWE World Heavyweight Champion’s hand was raised to set up the other half, and interference during said Chamber match created another — and got rolling with RAW the next night to shape the rest of the card.
Here’s what we have (or likely have) so far:
John Cena vs. Bray Wyatt: Fantastic. We’ll get into this later.
Brock Lesnar vs. The Undertaker: Needs to happen while it still can. We’ll get into this later, too.
Daniel Bryan vs. Triple H: The logical next step, much to the smarks’ chagrin.
Randy Orton (c) vs. Batista, WWE World Heavyweight Championship: …oops?
A face Batista challenging Orton? The fans hated it. A heel Batista challenging Orton? Could be even worse. See, the “smart” fans are impatient enough to think Bryan should hold every title in WWE, NXT, TNA, ROH and every other alphabet soup promotion in the world by now. OK, maybe that’s a stretch and they just want him to be the top guy in WWE. But there’s a story in play here that makes more sense than Bryan going against the champion: Bryan going against The Authority that has kept him away from the belt in the first place.
Where the smarks are right is the actual feud for the belt sucks, but it’s kind of their doing. Because Bryan wasn’t a surprise entrant and winner of the Rumble, the crowd proceeded to shit all over Rey Mysterio (for being the last man in, instead of Bryan), and Batista (for winning in his first match back). Batista hasn’t necessarily helped matters since, being a bit rusty in the ring and on the mic, and generally unentertaining all around. He was the best heel in the promotion in 2009-10, before he left with a spinal fracture, and WWE will pull the trigger on a heel turn Friday on SmackDown. Maybe that helps one end, but here’s another problem: Randy Orton is TERRIBLE as the good guy. When given something to work with, he’s among the best in the business, but he has been neutered for years as a face and, worse, as a heel since his turn at SummerSlam. Orton’s best as a face was never really good enough anyway (some guys are just better at being bad), but he really won’t be able to save this.
The good news? Smarks love watching what they hate almost as much as (if not more than) what they love. People will hate watch this (read here for The Masked Man’s always worthwhile take), and it will be memorable.
One way to theoretically save this would be adding a stipulation to the Bryan-Trips match, which remains unofficial: Bryan gets a title shot if he wins. From there, Bryan wins the ensuing triple-threat and ends the show standing tall with the belt. Would it make some people happy? Yes. Would it be so predictable and so, so contrived that it takes away from the luster of the actual payoff? YES!
But at this rate, nothing will actually seem good enough for someone touted by some in the pro wrestling bubble as the hottest, most popular wrestler since Steve Austin, except maybe the alphabet soup suggestion above. WWE has booked itself into a corner here, but that’s probably not entirely their fault. One sector of the wrestling community will feel shortchanged no matter what, but that’s entirely their own damn fault. They think only about their own little bubble, not the big picture, and they’re the ones with the booking ideas that would “FIX WRESTLING!!!!!1!” which really are just hotshotting title changes and face/heel turns enough that even The Big Show‘s character seems downright stable. They either don’t remember (or don’t care) that professional wrestling used to move much slower, and it sometimes used to take about a year for a feud to fully blow off, or a babyface to get his payoff. This is a longform story that will reach its conclusion not when a small, though vocal, sector of the fan base wants, but when the story is supposed to end. That could be WrestleMania. It could be SummerSlam. But Daniel Bryan will be champion again.
But then there’s another problem: What allure does Daniel Bryan have when the chase is over? And what will the smarks have to complain about next?
The Real World Champ 