Welcome, my dearest and sticky friends, to another edition of The Rager. As always, I am your indubitable and not-at-all overworked gondolier that goes by the name of Chris, Mr. Sanders if you’re nasty. This week, I’ve decided to take a break on just offering my divine insight on everything that’s gone on over the past week in the world of the WWE and just focus on one individual after viewing his video on WWE.com several times.
I speak, of course, of Daniel Bryan. If you’ve seen the video then you know that he not only confirmed his decision to cash in his Money in the Bank contract at Wrestlemania but also advocates the right to arm a man’s face with a beard. Take it from a major beard advocate since puberty, I highly appreciate someone who stands up in defense of the fact real men have beards. I don’t know if this video added to his recent downward slide is leading to a heel turn but I would love to see video segments of what makes a real man (I’m thinking something along the lines of the antithesis of “Dashing†Cody Rhodes).
Heel or face, I’m highly interested if this leads to a newish character for Bryan. When he re-re-debuted to join team Cena, he’s been billed (by Michael Cole) as a vegan dork. I wasn’t too familiar to his RoH years as for a while, I had my fingers in my ears to all things not WWE and apologize for my ignorance on that. I was immediately impressed with his in-ring abilities, as everyone with a brain should, and I noticed early on that he just kinda had an “aw-shucks†attitude with his early feuds as well as getting hit on by The Bellas and his romance with Gail Kim. As of late, he was put into half-hearted rivalries with various people, before and after his MitB win, and recently seems to just be getting squashed.
Speculation Time
With this recent video and sticking by being a real man and having a beard, he backs his decision to only cash it in a MitB and be a real champion, alluding that only real men can be real champions and going on to have a hyper-masculine disposition. I think, if he were to go the heel route, he’ll do the aforementioned Cody Rhodes way with a series of “you’re not a real man, I’m a real man†promos along with over-the-top shenanigans to back up these claims.
But if he goes with the face route, I would like him to be a no-nonsense attitude (you know, the side of the John Cena when he isn’t being goofy-Cena) where he just comes out proves his manliness in a series of easy/quick matches followed by hard-fought matches with stiff competition leading to Wrestlemania where he becomes the monster-slayer against Mark Henry (assuming rumors are true that Henry will keep the title). I also don’t buy into talk that Bryan is planned to be the first MitB holder to lose his championship match, I don’t think Vince wants to give up on that just yet but that’s just my own opinion.
Who knows, maybe the video will just be swept under the rug and this will all be for naught. Personally, I’ll ride the “real men have beards†train until I die…or at least until an employer tells me to shave it off. With that, I’d like to remind all the fellas (male or female) that Tuesday is the first of November and with that, No-Shave November begins. Let us all join in our high levels of testosterone and be men together (in the words of Kevin Nash).
In Other News:
I am highly disappointed in the release of Maryse (ha that rhymed…I swear I’m not 4). Granted it wasn’t anything shocking because she hasn’t done much after she stopped being Ted DiBiase’s arm candy except for her involvement in NXT. I hate to see her go because she was one of the very few Divas that I actually found to be attractive and not quite as annoying to listen to as the others (probably because I couldn’t understand her that well). I know I give the Divas a lot of grief on here but I’ve always thought that her lack of any sort of push was a crime. Also hopefully, WWE won’t give Miz the John Morrison/Melina treatment, which I don’t even see as a possibility seeing as how Miz is a great PR guy for them on interviews.
Well that about does it for me this week. If you have any thoughts on what I’ve touched on, please touch them as well in the comments section below or you can touch anything you like on there as well (within reason, people, geez). Be sure to follow me on twitter and we’ll have a special Live Rager on there tonight during the highly anticipated Muppet edition of Raw. Also, come back here at Pulse Wrestling and catch on all the latest news and columns throughout the week.
Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do twice,
Chris
The Answer: Man was not meant to work two 12 hour shifts in one weekend, just sayin…
