WWE Still Getting It Wrong With Daniel Bryan

Daniel Bryan loves professional wrestling. It’s all he wanted to be involved in growing up. He went to wrestling school right after he graduated high school. He excelled in professional wrestling right out of the gate. He was known as the “Best in the World” years before CM Punk and Chris Jericho attached their name to the title. Daniel Bryan is an extremely smart and intelligent person with a unique charisma and personality who happens to love professional wrestling.

So how is it that WWE, the biggest professional wrestling company in the world, has failed to utilize Daniel Bryan correctly throughout his entire career?

Bryan was never treated like a star by WWE. He became a star because, as mentioned, he’s a smart guy with a unique personality and a damn good wrestler. You can argue that he was treated like a star at Wrestlemania 30, but boy did a lot of things have to fall in his favor for him to make it to that position. And look how they followed that up. Bryan was always a fallback guy for WWE. A guy they trusted to have good matches and entertaining segments but didn’t trust enough to carry the company. He was, for lack of a better term, a B+ Player in their eyes.

And now he’s a B+ General Manager.

First off, the fact that Raw gets the cruiserweight brand despite Bryan’s involvement and genuine love of cruiserweight wrestling is laughable. How did they miss the boat on this? Bryan watches these guys wrestle for eight weeks, decides that he wants them on his brand, and that settles that. The fact that they didn’t think this through just goes to show how little thought they put into it and how oblivious they are when it comes to Bryan and how they should handle him.

The moment between Bryan and Brian Kendrick during Wednesday’s Cruiserweight Classic could’ve turned into something much more. And maybe it will, as it’s not a rule that every cruiserweight has to be on Raw, but I’d be shocked if WWE follows up on it in any way.

Then, of course, there’s The Miz situation.

The Miz cut the promo his life and one of the best promo’s in years on Daniel Bryan during a Talking Smack segment last week. All throughout the week, WWE advertised that Bryan would address Miz’ promo on Smackdown. That never happened. There was a brief backstage segment where Shane McMahon encouraged Bryan to apologize, but that was it. When Miz cut another, ahem, awesome promo, he was interrupted by Dolph Ziggler. Bryan was nowhere to be seen.

Bryan finally addressed the situation on Talking Smackdown following this week’s Smackdown. He said that WWE decided to drop his involvement because they didn’t want to build to a match that they couldn’t deliver. It was a valid concern, but it begs the question, why do it in the first place? It got people talking and turned Miz into an even bigger heel, but how did it help Bryan?

It was just another example of WWE showing their incompetence when it comes to Bryan.

Instead of having Bryan show some life and at least attacking Miz and putting him in the Yes Lock, Bryan just stood backstage and looked like the coward that Miz said he was. A match didn’t need to come out of this, but Bryan standing up for himself certainly did.

It’s not like Bryan got a match out of Shawn Michaels in 2013. There was the superkick, the yes lock, and things were settled. We all wanted that match, but at least there was some type of resolution and revenge for Bryan. What’s the endgame for him this time? Apologize and have Ziggler fight his battle for him? It keeps the heat on The Miz, which is a good thing, but it also shows how little thought they put into the story and how little they think of Bryan.

Bryan will make the best out of this situation because that’s what he does. Hell, he gave Apollo Crews a personality and character on accident, that’s how good Bryan is at making chicken salad out of chicken shit.

It’s just baffling how WWE has a guy who is so passionate and so charismatic and so geeky all at the same time on their hands, and they can’t figure out what to do with him when the camera turns on.

Follow me on twitter @jeremylambert88 where I tweet about 97 WWF and WCW.