There’s still so much yet to be seen with Daniel Bryan and his recent association with the Wyatts but that hasn’t stopped any of us from speculating because it’s fun and it’s kind of a specialty of wrestling fans with an internet connection.
On this week’s 10 Thoughts, I briefly mentioned how this feels more like the “JBL hiring Shawn Michaels” type of story rather than the Hawkeye brainwashing template. For those of you that don’t remember or wasn’t watching WWE in 2008/2009, I’ll give you a brief summation.
Shawn Michaels apparently lost a lot of his wealth during the downfall of the American economy. Shawn was out of options and was hired by JBL as his insurance policy or however they worded it. Over the following months, Shawn did everything from interfering with matches to ensure a JBL victory or was a wrestling avatar. Basically, Shawn was obligated to do all he could to try to put JBL in championship opportunities. Eventually, Shawn tried to get out of the contract but was always met with new barriers to halt any progress. Finally, JBL had a match against Shawn (I believe it was No Way Out) with the stipulation of if Shawn wins, his contract with JBL was voided but still receives money to feed his family. Of course, Shawn won to put a nice little bow on the story and then Shawn went on to face Undertaker (the first time) at Wrestlemania and JBL lost very quickly to Rey Mysterio and promptly quit thereafter.
First of all, the thing I loved about that storyline is how it actually had an endpoint. I’m sure you can think of time after time where a really strong feud begins, goes on for far too long and then dies a slow and painful death…or just ends. The thing about this plot was that it HAD to end because of what was on the horizon for Shawn that next month. I’m not sure if they actually planned out the JBL/HBK thing with the end in mind or just came up with something when the time came but still, I enjoyed it and didn’t feel like Shawn was just in a holding pattern until Taker was ready.
Going back to Daniel Bryan, sure his story with the Wyatts doesn’t exactly match up perfectly with HBK/JBL (or at all, really) but I am glad WWE doesn’t seem to be going with the easy brainwashed angle. This past Raw, Daniel laid into the Wyatts and gave insight as to why his character willingly joined. He stated that he joined to learn and transform himself into a monster and he also stated that he could teach the others as well. So it’s not so much that Bryan was lured into being brainwashed but rather went willingly to get an edge. Like HBK, Daniel essentially ran out of options and joined forces with the baddies to make it beneficial for him in the long run. How will it end?I honestly have no idea and, as I’ve stated as before, whenever WWE leaves me clueless on where a story is going is a great thing. I do know this, there’s no way WWE can make Daniel full heel right now, not with the crowd reaction he’s getting. It almost like the last half of Punk’s title reign, there were still plenty of cheers for the man in spite of all the despicable things Punk could muster. So I see either Bray’s bunch turning face or at least a tweener or Bryan makes them implode and comes out on top.
As long as this doesn’t turn into Cena being forced to join Nexus, I think I’ll be happy with however this turns out. It is a shame how Cena/Nexus ended up considering it’s first few months and even the part where Cena was forced to join, it was an interesting twist that made things interesting. That’s when things truly resembled HBK/JBL because that caused Cena to partake in heelish things without actually being a heel. However, WWE should’ve come up with better incentive for Cena and stayed away from the “Wade Barrett could fire you from WWE” thing. Everyone knew that Cena might miss a week at the very most and would be right back through some miraculous loophole. Turns out, Cena couldn’t even miss a week and then promptly tore through the Nexus with ease which made the previous few months of matches kinda pointless. But ultimately, I think I’m just pissed at the string of chairs spot at TLC while Wade was under that table or whatever that was. ‘Twas truly the dumbest thing I’ve seen until the debut of Los Matadores and El Torito.
And again, I can state how glad I am that this isn’t some sort of brainwashing story because Hawkeye was a dumb, waste of plot in Avengers. Seriously, what was the purpose of Hawkeye getting brainwashed by Loki? To get Loki and the brainwashed scientist out of SHIELD HQ? You’re telling me that Loki, a Norse god and his Loki-Pokey stick couldn’t blast his way out or teleport out of there with the tesseract? At least the brainwashed scientist served a purpose in Loki’s evil plot, Hawkeye was just rewired to aim his arrows at the good guys. And even when he was knocked back to his senses, he just had good aim. Sure, he was equipped with super special arrows but any well-trained redneck could do the same. I love Avengers, I truly did but a rich guy with a robot suit, a Norse god and two science experiments don’t need a robin hood sidekick. You know who else was really good at aiming things? Bullseye and I don’t think I need to remind you all of how much Daredevil sucked.
The point I’m trying to make is that Hawkeye is a lame “super” hero and Daniel Bryan has something up his non-existent sleeve.
Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do twice,
Chris
The Answer: You probably don’t want to click on this if your name is Blair.
