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IMP_ervious on 27 February 2014
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d21lewis said:
UltimateUnknown said:
If they pushed Brain and gave him the titles right now, he will essentially become the next Super-Cena with all the hustle, loyalty, respect. The question is, do you want that?

Cena was the man during ruthless aggression era and a ton of fun to watch before we got Super-Cena in the PG Era.


People liked Cena until he started putting out rap albums and he became too politically correct.  It was like he was being forced on us.  Fans don't like being told who to like.  We choose our own guy.  Back when the Rock and Stone Cold were "The Guy" we wanted them to have the belts and they got 'em.  When the WWE realized how big the Rock was and made him start producing music (what the hell is up with WWE and music!?) and over exposing him, people turned on The Rock, too.  It's a fine balance and I'm still not 100% the WWE can pull it off properly, even with Daniel Bryan gift wrapped with a bow on top.  After the Royal Rumble, with fans behind Daniel Bryan, Triple H and Stephanie came out and gave him their endorsement....and it just felt wrong.  We'll see where it goes. 

The World Championship was always a second class title when the WWE got it from ECW.  Everybody knows the WWE Title was the real one.  They put it on Bryan at Summerslam but, per some report, ratings went down after Cena was gone for rehab.  They quickly took the belt away from DB.  When Cena returned, ratings went back up.  Bryan, as much as I love him (In the pro wrestling thread, I said he was my Wrestler of the Year maybe two years ago!) he's gonna be a hard sell.  He's like Bret Hart in the 90's.  Spectacular but not mainstream.  The WWE likes mainstream and they like ratings.

To be fair, they put the belt on Bryan for about 3 minutes at Summerslam before Triple H hit a pedigree on him and Orton cashed in his MITB briefcase and became WWE champion. Then he beat Orton for the title at the next PPV (forget which it was) but they took the belt off him again the very next night on Raw.

They haven't actually tried to give him a decent title run yet to see if he can keep ratings steady or improve them. If anything, the ratings fell because people were upset about how things were heading. A lot of people actually managed to get refunds for all of the PPV's that WWE kept screwing Bryan over on.

OP: I don't mind that they're taking the slow burn approach with Bryan. It makes it more memorable when he finally reaches the top. The problem I have is that they haven't given him a compelling and steady angle to work with during that slow burn period. He went from raging against the WWE machine for a month or two, fighting/joining the Wyatt family for about a month (not enough time to really build a good feud) to just kind of barely getting into PPV main events and now back to raging against the machine. It's like they don't know what to do with him while they keep him away from the title.