This is where i see it going:

The gimmick of the story where he is the unlikely champion is perfect for how he has been booked. But after he starts racking up victories he can quickly transition from the unlikely underdog to joint snapping mistake destroying legit champion he should be booked as.

If they know what they are doing - which is questionable lets be honest - he will beat Big Show in a pretty legit manner on Friday, nothing crazy like kicking out after a KO punch but just generally taking a lot of punishment then locking in some kind of submission, maybe going as far as dodging the KO punch to reverse it into a switch form of the Labelle Lock. Then he can win at the RR against someone worthy, then so on and so forth with a series of matches and defending his championship on the regular with the goal being a slow transition from Cole hating on him constantly to finally respecting him. Meanwhile his gimmick shifts at the same pace with more of a cocky edge to him openly mocking heels and the stuff like where he kicked Henry's injured ankle and faked him out with the handshake, culminating in him taking on and defeating Henry at Wrestlemania.

The point is the crowd needs to buy into him changing, which is where they went wrong with Swagger having an overnight shift that they just couldnt buy into. You shift Cole from the constant burying hater to a begrudging respector similar to how he gives credit to the top faces like Punk, Cena, Orton and Sheamus. If they pull it off right he walks into Miami a fan favourite and a legit champ and the story becomes whether Henry can beat him like he managed in the close match in December on Raw, or is the new style of Bryan enough to overcome him and avoid the hall of pain.

the dependence on bryan succeeding as a heel needs to stop

credible main event heels: ziggler, miz, adr, rhodes, barrett, henry, christian, y2j

credible main event faces: cena, punk, sheamus, orton (and this is ignoring guys on their last legs like h, ut or rmj)

there is a comical abundance of heels at the main event level. gotta stop going to the copout of "oh, bryan would be great as a heel"

everyone would be great as heels. being a heel is easy. bryan needs to get over as a face cuz there's really none there, and we wonder why the main event is constantly stale as ****. push bryan as a mini-goldberg. stop trying to get him over as this underdog story, stop giving him mic time. give him a promo where cole is in the ring disparaging him and have bryan come to the ring, say nothing, and beat the everloving **** out of cole for a solid 5 minutes and leave without saying a word. this way u can change cole from constantly burying bryan to cowering in fear

i think bryan needs a reboot and this is the best way to go about doing it. and he can sell this despite his size because his moves legit look devastating.

arrive

dominate

leave

That would be awesome.

The point about heel turning being necessary as counter productive to his success is a good one. Its also got to be said that when you look at guys like Swagger and Drew both went on pretty dominant streaks as heels and they didnt get over for various reasons. Even Ziggler struggled as a heel before Vickie came along as he never quite got enough traction to get over the top.

The WWE doesnt need another top heel and if they are turning Bryan then why even both having him hold the belt, have him lose it, turn him as part of the loss then replace him with Cody or Barret who are significantly over as heels and a zero risk swap.

As ive said before this may be his last major push. If he burns out and doesnt get moving for whatever reason then he may get that heel turn and a career as a midcard jobber to the stars who like Swagger is kept around cos they are good in the ring and still maintain some credibility regardless of their loss streaks but they struggle to ever go anywhere. Getting booed is easy, you just insult the local sports team and whoever the top babyface is and you are over, sure not mega over but enough to be worth jobbing to someone.

But its also really really ****ing hard to stay relevant as a heel because faces almost always win and its easy to slip out of value so its not worth having you lay down for Orton or Cena in a big feud. Its why so few heels can survive being fed to Cena, hell it almost killed Miz's career a couple years ago.

fairly sure i would become a bryan mark overnight if this happened. brilliant

this is a man who got fired, kayfabe or not (the firing, not the strangling), for his attempted murder of justin roberts with a necktie. there's no way u can tell me he can't get over as unstoppable, even with his size

i don't understand why you need to be a heel to get the generic henry/brodus/viscera beat the **** out of everything gimmick. faces can do that too

Because every heel in the company is booked to run away like a coward before they can get beaten up

Alberto used to not be like that

Cowardly heels are AWESOME but they have to be done right. Christian does it right. Hell, Mark Henry plays a semi-coward tough guy and he does it right. Pretty much nobody else does.

Thats one of the things I love about Zigglers current gig (even tho "showoff" is stupid) tho

I'm calling it now

Daniel Bryan vs. Michael Cole at Wrestlemania (obv not for the belt)

JEE-ZUS

(you totally nailed it )

Let's be real here. DB is great in the ring, but he's not a great face right now no matter how he is pushed. He is a better heel than face, so he should have been pushed as a heel from the start. Once established, he opens himself up to more opportunities.

Basically, I'm not confident DB is capable of getting way over as a face right now no matter how he is booked.

I'd love to see Bryan as a face destroying everybody, but if you look at what he's done since he won the title, that doesn't seem to be the direction they're going. He's build up so far as a coward and his title win as a fluke:

- He cashes in the case vs a helpless Big Show instead of cashing it in at WM. I know everyone does that but it's easy to see how this can be seen as a cowardly move.

- He distracts Henry so Big Show can win his matches, but he never actually faces him but instead runs away. So the World Champ is running away from other guys on the roster? Not good if he's supposed to be a face.

- He beats Cody with a package. That's not a dominant win at all, it's more like a "caught him off guard and got lucky" win. Most fans probably saw Bryan as the underdog in that match, eventhough he's the WHC.

WWE might change the way they book him, but so far there's been no sign at all of a dominant champion. I think it's way more likely that he either turns heel or that he gets Edge's gimmick as an opportunist (without going full heel) and somehow defends his title taking advantage of some favorable circumstances. In any event I doubt that he'll be champion going into WM, but I hope I'm wrong.

Heel Bryan vs Orton at WM would be cool.

remember when we assumed punk/ziggler was middle of the show cuz there had to be a hole in the ring?

**** this company

I hate quoting myself as I know others thought this too but i cant multi-quote the lols on my phone from people defending Punk in the middle as part of a great plan.

Granted I heard Dave Meltzer discuss this off and on all last week but the only people who claimed it was hole-related were the apologists for a horrid episode with 1.5 things worthwhile on it IMO.

Seriously **** Vince and the soap opera writers in the face.

WE NAMED THE DOG INDIANA!

Although I should have been clearer that I was not expressing a jaded opinion and was regurgitating what whoever WON's insiders were telling them about Vince's hot ideas following the ratings tank that Punk/Ryder/Bryan were "responsible for."

All of tpir's tilt over this episode has been pretty entertaining, but this remains the highlight IMO.

Hahaha. The tilt only really got strong after listening to Bryan and Dave discuss the "why" of a lot of this nonsense. And I was not calling you out directly FWIW but saw your post first when I was scrolling on my phone and again can not multi-quote. Basically nothing good about Raw should ever be attributed to any of the writers since they have less than a hint of a clue.

Jericho does deserve credit though and I have reversed course on his segment mostly but still wish the WWE.com video would have aired on TV.

Punk and Ziggler deserve credit to but the current "plan" is allegedly for neither of them to be champ going into Mania and they see Ziggler as "not ready" yet (whatever that means in Vince's book.)

It's bad enough they believed a title match between the 2 best wrestlers and entertainers on raw couldn't outdraw John cena and the temple of rape, but they also believed the super-hyped return of meta-Jericho couldn't outdraw it. That is just indefensible

I mean, I have to admit that putting that Jericho segment on last would have been really ****ing weird.

But yeah, if it wasn't them keeping an eye on continuity and they just thought the Cena segment was better then LOL at them.

All is forgiven though if they don't ignore continuity and open smackdown with a RIP hornswoggle display and have a 5 bell salute

Yeah, I'll just give this much of a spoiler in this thread: Horny is alive and well on Friday's show.

It's like that time that R-Truth no-sold death and just showed up the following week on Raw as if he hadn't been vaporized the week before.

Smackdown match results spoiler featuring Hornswoggle but seriously **** you if you care about him

**** this company

SealOfCertainty.jpg IMO