(This is still a bit scattershot, and more aimed at non-fans but I felt compelled to throw it together after Daniel Bryan's retirement last night.)
If you encountered him on the street, you probably wouldn't guess that Daniel Bryan was a wrestler. He's short. He's not super jacked. He's not really "Hollywood" handsome. And he's not the world's most eloquent speaker, either.
But he's the best at what he does, and he worked his ass off every night for years and years, never giving less than 100%. You could tell just by watching him in the ring or listening to him talk how much he cares. It's infectious, and over time the audience grew to love him.
Unfortunately for Daniel Bryan, because he lacked those traits of a "traditional" superstar wrestler, the WWE saw him more as an upper-mid-tier talent. A B+ player, if you will. Good, but not nearly marketable enough to be the top guy. They kept Daniel Bryan away from the World Championship, and thought his surging support was a temporary thing; that the audience would come around to accept one of the company's choices for "top guy."
But the fans refused. They got behind Daniel Bryan even more, and any attempt to shift the audience's attention away from him just made support for the guy even stronger. It got to the point where audiences were chanting his name during matches that had nothing to do with him. The crowd had hijacked the show, and the WWE was forced to address the issue head on.
In steps Hunter Hearst Helmsley, better known as Triple H. He's a 13-time World Champion and COO of the WWE. He tells the audience that Daniel Bryan could have his shot, but only if Bryan was able to beat HIM, first.
And Daniel Bryan does beat him. Not only that, but on the same night, Daniel Bryan beats BOTH of Triple H's handpicked champions to capture the WWE World Championship in the main event of Wrestlemania 30, the biggest event of the year.
Daniel Bryan had finally, truly, reached the mountaintop of pro wresting. But he had clawed his way there, fighting with everything he had. And there was a cost.
Shortly after Wrestlemania, he was injured, and the doctors wouldn't clear him to compete. All those years of pushing himself to the limit had caught up to him, and he was forced to give up the title he had worked so hard to obtain without a fight.
~
Now, if you're not familiar with wrestling, you might be asking "Wait, is this just a wrestling storyline or is it real?" and the answer is that it's both. Daniel Bryan really was underappreciated by the WWE, and he really did gain the support of the crowd over time to the point where it was ruining WWE's plans, and he really was injured shortly after winning the title and was forced to give it up. It's all part of an emergent narrative that comes from the live and semi-improvised nature of the show. (Which I may do another post about in the future) Even though wrestling isn't "real," this unpredictability leads to the same kind of drama that occurs in sports.
The part where Daniel Bryan fights Triple H in order to get a shot at the title and then goes on to win that title is, of course, a scripted narrative, but one that's informed by the emergent narrative. The WWE found themselves in a spot where the best story to tell was one where they themselves were the villains, trying and failing to screw over the crowd-favorite upstart.
Usually there's some friction between these two narrative threads in wrestling. There's nothing more awkward than a wrestler coming out to a dead crowd, or when the WWE acts as though a wrestler who routinely gets booed is a beloved hero. But with Daniel Bryan at Wrestlemania, everything clicked into place.
If you listen to hardcore fans of wrestling, you'll notice that they spend a lot of time complaining, and you might find it baffling that they keep watching if they hate it so much. And yeah, wrestling can be pretty bad a lot of the time (Most of the time, if we're being honest,) but even if wrestling is bad 90% of the time, when those two layers of narrative line up just right, and all the pieces are moving in sync, the result is fucking magical.
Even in these rare moments, the writing is rarely amazing, but it doesn't have to be amazing. It just needs to act as a vehicle to deliver on the drama that builds up organically over the course of a wrestler's career. The catharsis of Daniel Bryan winning the title and the crushing disappointment of it being ripped away from him by injury are emotional plateaus that are extremely difficult for traditional media to match, because of the way Daniel Bryan (the fictional character on a scripted show) and Daniel Bryan (The real person whose career you're following) are intertwined.
The video below is fantastic and does a great job of summarizing the storyline leading up to Wrestlemania, but it's hard to really capture the years of effort and struggle that it took for Daniel Bryan to get to that point, or the sense of excitement when it was all paid off, unless you were along for the ride.
And really, that's why I keep watching wrestling even when it sucks. I want to have been around for the ride whenever it pays off.
Log in to comment