Sheamus is viewed as the guy that can carry the torch. 99% chance he goes over Bryan clean at mania. Unless orton takes the belt off Bryan at a random smackdown before. Either way, sheamus is coming out of mania as world champ.

I am not saying that is necessarily a bad thing either. I think Sheamus is pretty awesome, and Bryan has already had a good first title reign that is better than most (especially in recent history). If Bryan holds it for another month, and drops at Wrestlemania, that does nothing to take away from Bryan.

Anyone who thinks its obvious whether Bryan or Sheamus wins at Mania isnt paying attention imo.

There are lots of ways they can book the match with either going over with neither looking bad in the loss and unless the Smackdown writing and direction changes pretty sharply im personally stacking it with really low amounts of confidence points.

Whilst they do see Sheamus as the future its true that they clearly see Bryan as the future too. Dont look at his title reign winning repeatedly by DQ as being similar to Miz barely winning with help from Riley or Punk barely beating Batista despite Kane shooting him in the face (iirc).

His reign has been booked extremely well and the finishes have been exactly perfect every single time with the end result of the story is they either:
1, have Bryan man up and beat Sheamus after outwrestling him for most of the match and working to contain his power the rest of the time
2, have Bryan get a beatdown for most of the match but then find a reversal spot and Sheamus taps
3, have a very even back and forth match that ends with Sheamus passing out in the LaBell lock a la Austin vs Bret
4, Sheamus dominates, gets out of the LaBell and then hits the Braugh kick for the win
5, back and forth match that ends with Bryan KOed by the Braugh kick after he tries and fails to beat Sheamus with various submissions

1, wont happen against Sheamus but it could easily happen in a warm up match against a lesser wrestler such as Kofi and Cody again. His gimmick is clear that he beats normal guys without much problem but its the big monster guys he struggles with, but him finding his aggression from now until WM does make this a slim possibility.

We know that 2 is exactly why Vince is high up on Bryan, he has literally said that Bryan doesnt look like a guy who could beat someone up but he is clearly a guy who could find a way to beat you if you make a mistake. Personally i think that will instead happen on live Smackdown against Big Show in a grudge match to blow off their feud and solidify the Big Show turn.

3 is clearly the one everyone should want. It would easily be the best match of the night, completely solidifies Sheamus as being a cut above as he overcomes Bryan's catchphrase that "everybody taps".

4, would be terrible but isnt an impossible ending to the story, but id say its much less likely than 1.

5, is the standard outcome, both look good, Sheamus wins in a way that Bryan doesnt look bad and they both put up a solid back and forth telling a story. With time this could reach number 3 levels of awesomeness and against could easily be the best match of the night.

Anyone else remember that Bryan vs Shaemus got bumped from Wrestlemania last year at the last second so they could give more time to Michael Cole and Snooki? But this year we'll get 6 weeks of Cole begging us to take it seriously by calling it "the main event" like 5 dozen times.

Both have had huge years. They are completely not the same characters as they were last year with both having face and heel turns, Sheamus has picked up three new finishers, Bryan has at least two more finishers/signature moves in his rotation and their gimmicks have changed beyond their turns too.

Them being bumped to the dark match is an interesting piece of trivia but its dumb to try and think that demonstrates anything beyond "holy **** this year Smackdown was crazy good at developing talent".

Sheamus tapping at mania 0%
scenario 5 about 90%

0% chance that 12ressi has seen a booking sheet for this year's Mania.

yea you're right, because at mania

these guys

might have this guy

tap to this guy

seems very likely after the last 30+ years of WWF/WWE booking

I have great hopes for this emerging coalition of Ace, GOATunga, Mark Henry, Christian, and ADR, and their prospect of getting Teddy Long fired. Someone mentioned that this could be a great stable, and I absolutely agree.

Signs seem to point that Teddy Long's job will be in jeopardy in the coming weeks. I hope his fraternizing with the talent (Aksana) is a major catalyst in his eventual firing.

It would certainly be nice if this Aksana nonsense actually did have a good payoff, even though it hardly needed to go on for 6+ months to get here.

Expect to see Swagger and Dolph involved too IMO.

If we don't start calling that stable The A-Team, I riot.

0% chance that Hogan pins Warrior completely cleanly at WM VI.

I'm not saying that Bryan will make Sheamus tap; I'm saying that it's within the realm of possibility (meaning that your extremes are pretty absurd), and that I doubt WWE creative already have their mind made up on this one. In fact I'd be surprised if both guys weren't booked to win this match at some points between now and when the match goes down.

Ace-Team!

As someone who has not watched Bryan in the indies, I think you guys seriously overestimate

1. His WWE potential.
2. His WM Chances
3. How over he is.

Someone ITT said they did no bring him in to be an upper midcarder, whereas Im somewhat sure that is precisely what he is going to be.

If VKM actually cared about the WHC or SD I highly doubt Bryan would be anywhere near it.

Im not trying to hate on Bryan, his work ive seen I like, but I think someone needs to dump some reality potion.

Oh, I'm sure "creative" will write all sorts of endings where Bryan goes over clean. They just have no shot of getting OK'd by Vince/HHH come April 1.

agree, and I love Bryan but it is what it is with WWE

Bryan got the WHC through pure luck, im pretty sure he was meant to be the first to lose his briefcase cash in as the plan was Orton vs Henry at WM, however since winning the case he has really legitimised his good fortune. It helps that its clear he is heavily involved with how this run is being booked and his promos and story are written similar to how Punk got a lot of creative control when he feuded with Jeff Hardy through to MITB as the inspiration is clearly not derived from the same source as the rest of the show.

Like i say anyone who thinks its clear that one is going to win is misunderstanding the situation in play because not only did Bryan luck his way into the title Sheamus lucked his way into the Royal Rumble win too. Like LKJ says if they have an idea where they want to go (which isnt necessarily true) they can easily rewrite on the fly due to crowd reactions or subtle changes that they never saw coming which includes how people react during dark matches and house shows when the two of them start working together and they see if what they have on paper works in reality.

As for what happens beyond WM, who knows. If Bryan retains i fully expect him to drop the title pretty quickly and be drafted to Raw where they are simply desperate for a heel vaguely over who can work a top class match without botching and dropping a guy on his head and whether he ends up as a main event staple like Punk or drops back to the midcard lives and dies on how his inevitable feud with Cena goes down.

At this point my realistic expectations is that scenario 5 happens where they have a great 20 minute back and forth match, Bryan takes Sheamus to the limit and together they steal the show with the end result being a new WHC. But it certainly doesnt have to end that way.

markhenryclapping.gif

Well said. I think most people on here tend to rate pure technical wrestling ability as far more important than either the WWE management or most of its fans do. Which is fine, but when checkbooks are actually involved that other stuff (especially #3) matters.

Which, as I said yesterday during the PPV, is why the Italian Hacksaw (who got multiple pops that Kevin Nash is jealous of) continues to draw a pretty good check despite almost nobody here understanding how he does it.

yea, truth of the matter is if vince decided to just pander to the IWC, the WWE would be bankrupt

kofi kingston brings absolutely nothing to the table besides athleticism, he's basically shelton benjamin, but he's hugely over cuz he claps his hands or some ****

triple h who every fan should absolutely detest still gets enormous pops every time motorhead hits

even cena....i feel like the cena sucks contingent is largely populated by people just jumping on the bandwagon cuz it's the "it" thing to do

santino's over cuz he has an exaggerated italian accent which is always funny cuz lol_foreigner and makes stupid jokes all the time

hornswoggle's over cuz he's a midget who cracks stupid jokes

IWC is the minority and a contrarian view from the majority who just doesn't give a **** and is easily amused. daniel bryan is a minority darling and a majority who gives a ****

SD ratings have been consistently on the rise sense Bryan got the belt. This has been while Orton and Christian have been out for several weeks. Bryan has done very well, a lot of people are under valuing him. Go look at the ratings, they speak for themselves.

Sure Bryan tends to be a minority figure, but the WWE model is based on giving everything to all. While the IWC is around 20% of their audience targeting that other 80% like a laser is a flawed approach and they know this.

Of course the end of the day is that Bryan needs to get over with all segments of fans and i dont think anyone is missing that, but i think he is well on the way to doing so given he is 2 months into a completely new gimmick right down to becoming heel only approx 1 month ago.

Given getting over works by bouncing off who he is feuding with, which Sheamus very much is and he will probably be working with Orton and Big Show who both are and they will start ratcheting up the push over this time to make him a credible threat and legitimate heel worth hating i think he is well on the way to being in the ballpark of where a main event WM heel should be.

There are clearly other reasons for this

Raw EC was good, started a bit slow but picked up steam quickly with Ziggler and then Truth.

Beth vs Tamina was actually a legit match, that's already more than you can ever expect from a diva match.

Johnny and the superstars lobbying for SD GM was decent.

Smackdown EC started boring, Big Show shouldn't have started imo. Rhodes vs Barrett could have been a way better start with Show coming in later. Khali was a waste of a spot but at least we didn't have to watch that immobile clown for more than 20 seconds. Santino actually justified his spot just because the crowd was so into it. Somewhere the match stepped up and became good.

Farting gimmick on PPV is just lol, US Championship match was throwaway but whatever.

Kane vs Cena was as expected, would have loved to see it opening the show and Raw EC finishing but as long as the crowd is so into Cena matches he will continue to main event everything.

I just hope that they don't turn the Sheamus vs Bryan WM match into a triple threat with Big Show.

FTR, I am a kofi believer. I actually like him on the mic when they give him a chance to speak. His feud with Orton a few years back showed he can have an edge too. I think he can be a top guy down the road.

They're talking about turning it in a triple threat with Orton, which I would be ok with.