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| Sure, Orton and Batista are involved, but it's all about the Beard and the Boss Photo Credit: WWE.com |
Daniel Bryan vs. Triple H, the winner of that match vs. Randy Orton (c) vs. Batista
How: Randy Orton won the WWE Championship from Daniel Bryan thanks to a Shawn Michaels superkick at Hell in a Cell, and unified it with the World Heavyweight Championship at TLC against John Cena. Batista won the Royal Rumble. Bryan got in on the action by forcing Triple H's hand and making their match at Mania an entryway into the title match via Occupy RAW. The week after, Triple H announced if he won, he'd step into the match.
The Story: June 27, 2011 was when CM Punk took to the stage at the Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas, NV, and first dropped a pipe bomb on WWE. In his iconic promo, he called Triple H the "doofus son-in-law." From that moment until SummerSlam 2013, Trips did nearly everything he could to prove he was the opposite of what Punk called him, to be a great leader. That line of thinking got him a mass employee walkout, an ultimately losing battle against Brock Lesnar, and some head trauma. Getting his brain rattled may have knocked loose his true intentions though.
Meanwhile, at WrestleMania XXVIII, in the opening match, a cocksure World Heavyweight Champion named Daniel Bryan came down to the ring with his main squeeze, AJ Lee, to defend against Sheamus. One good luck kiss, a Brogue Kick, and 18 seconds later, a movement started. Fans, disgusted with WWE's treatment Bryan, chanted "YES! YES! YES!" during the rest of Mania, during the next night on RAW, and during every show WWE produced until the present day.
Then the case of Randy Orton comes into focus. A man with the world handed to him on a silver platter, he floundered as the centerpiece of a show. He did everything he could think of to be a counterbalance to John Cena. He threatened to cancel WrestleMania as a villain, and tried to be a slier version of Steve Austin as a hero. Many reasons could be pinpointed as to why he faltered, but crowds seemed to like the RKO better than they liked R.K.O.
At SummerSlam, all three streams made confluence. Bryan was anointed by Cena to be his challenger to the WWE Championship. Triple H, intentions pure-seeming, inserted himself as the guest referee. Lurking in the wings was Orton with his Money in the Bank briefcase. Bryan hit Cena with a Solid Knee-Plus, the debut of that move in his repertoire. Triple H counted three and raised his hand. A new era was to begin, one with Bryan as the inheritor to Cena's throne. But then Orton appeared, and instead of remaining impartial, Triple H showed his true colors.
A Pedigree and a no-effort cash-in later, Randy Orton was WWE Champion, and Daniel Bryan was on the outside looking in. Triple H, his McMahon-kin, Orton, and his new secret police The Shield coalesced around the Championship as The Authority. Trips told Bryan that he did what he did not for personal reasons, but because it was best for business, that a guy like Orton as the face of WWE would sell more tickets. Bryan, after all, was a solid B-plus player, but he was no Orton, who was the coal who formed into a diamond.
The next two months saw Bryan lob volleys at The Authority in an ineffective manner. No matter what he did, their crushing stranglehold on WWE squelched Bryan's assault on their core. The seemingly final blow came at Hell in a Cell, when Bryan's first mentor Shawn Michaels even turned his back and executed the will of his heterosexual life partner and former DX bandmate. Meanwhile, inspiration would come from an unlikely source.
Bray Wyatt saw WWE as a machine that needed destroying. He saw Bryan as rage against said machine that needed a bit of efficacy. So he set out to make Bryan join him. Bryan had the raw power. He just needed direction, and Wyatt found that the only way to give him said direction was to beat it into him. For two months, Wyatt and his family beat the ever-loving shit out of Bryan, until finally, he acquiesced and joined. Well, he joined for two weeks until he found the moment to strike and destroy Wyatt from within. Even though Wyatt won the actual match at the Royal Rumble, Bryan found he had the wherewithal to take out one evil organization. He was ready to battle for his title again.
However, his plans had an unexpected kink put in them. Batista, who walked out of WWE four years ago, unhappy with what the place had become, returned. He expected a hero's welcome at the Royal Rumble, but as he tossed Roman Reigns to win the Rumble and a shot at Orton, who had accumulated the World Heavyweight Championship as well in the interim, the crowd turned on him. The fans wanted Bryan.
They almost got him a month later. Bryan was one of the competitors within the Elimination Chamber, but thanks to interference from his former friend Kane, yet another chance to upend Orton came up short. He was incensed, so he went straight to the top. He began assailing Triple H, haranguing him if you will. If Bryan couldn't have a title shot, he wanted a piece of the man who kept putting the screws to him. Trips, however, didn't think Bryan was worth his time.
Then, Bryan brought hundreds of fans into the ring and occupied RAW. He threatened to hold RAW hostage until Triple H not only gave him the singles match he wanted, but if he won said match that he'd be placed into the Orton/Batista WWE World Heavyweight Championship match. Furious that Bryan dared mess with the one thing he cared about outside of his family, Triple H finally gave in, but he would have his own salvo. After explaining to Bryan that he was only trying to protect him, Trips, with the help of his wife and some rent-a-cops, beat the holy shit out of Bryan to the point where his health became uncertain. Bryan was off RAW for a week, and looked to be a no-show this past week as well. But then he came flying out of the crowd like a banshee, put a knee right in Batista's face, chased off Orton, and gave Trips the receipt for his own beatdown.
Analysis: The Triple H/Daniel Bryan match is a wild card. On one hand, I've enjoyed a grand total of two matches Triple H has been involved in since I came back to wrestling in 2008 - Triple H and Shawn Michaels vs. Legacy at SummerSlam '09, and the Triple H/Undertaker Hell in a Cell match at Mania XXVIII. However, any Daniel Bryan match that has been given a stage and hasn't been on the first incarnation of NXT has been thoroughly enjoyable. The man could be given 20 minutes to work mat exchanges with Great Khali and probably find a way to make it work, so if anyone can drag an enjoyable match out of post-Game Triple H, that man is the American goddamn Dragon.
However, the finish is going to play a HUGE role in the overall quality of the match. No matter how enticing the money line would be to bet on a clean finish, I would not take it. Something screwy is going to happen, but will it enhance the match or detract from it? I can't project perception, however, but I can expect more overbooking than not. Stephanie McMahon coming out seems academic. Kane is another sure thing. The Shield could appear to. The ultimate coup de grace would be Hulk Hogan. Either way, something very Attitude Era is going to happen here.
AS for the title match, I am less hopeful for a "good" match. Triple threats, or even fatal four ways (because let's face it, this match can definitely become a fatal four way), rarely if ever are good. The formula doesn't lend itself to quality. Someone is almost always playing dead on the outside (although in Batista's case, he might actually be blown up when he's sucking his wind), the flow of action gets contrived to get the inert party back into it, and the finish usually is loaded with deus ex machina.
However, the final match does not need to be good to be satisfying. All it needs is for Bryan to get the fall in clean fashion, and for him to lead the biggest YES! chant in history with one title belt in each hand. It's a simple formula, and WWE would be wise not to fuck it up.
Who Should Win: Daniel Bryan winning both matches, clean, in the middle of the ring, is the only way this sequence of matches should play out. An acceptable compromise would involve some screwiness, but Bryan leaving Mania without the Championship would be an absolute failure of storytelling. Wins and losses don't matter; storytelling does. However, what happens when the company set up winning the MacGuffin as the only means of catharsis? Then the results matter. If Bryan doesn't win, then WWE will have presented a show that might drown out the criticism for the finale of How I Met Your Mother. That statement might seem a bit hyperbolic, but have you seen how bitchy wrestling fans can be? I've been around them my whole life. Hell, I AM one bitchy-ass wrestling fan. The cacophony will be LOUD.
Who Will Win: WWE can't fuck this up, can it? Can it? I've been hurt too many times by Triple H in the past to say with 100 percent certainty that Bryan will win, but the way this story has been set up, no other outcome can be in play but Bryan winning the title, right?
Right?