Was Daniel Bryan a commercial success?
 

This is a conversation I was roped into earlier, and it's one that I've never particularly considered, because it's the last time I remember being truly emotionally invested in a wrestling act, and a lot of my interest in the business side of things has developed out of trying to understand why I'm not as invested anymore.

We're all familiar with the Daniel Bryan story -- an independent darling that didn't exactly fit the WWE mold, who managed to somehow find a connection with the audience which became an almost memetic and cathartic release against the status quo programming of WWE. Critically, Daniel Bryan is regarded as one of the more technically gifted stars the WWE has ever had, and his success in the WWE was equal parts surreal and well-deserved.

But was the fan-driven rise of Daniel Bryan "worth it?" Although he did not get as much time as we would have liked on top, when you look at the rise of Bryan through 2012 and 2013, en route to his big WrestleMania win in 2014, is there an identifiable rise in interest towards the WWE product, or were we the only people paying attention?

Looking at the numbers, while Bryan didn't drastically boost ratings or PPV buys, I don't think you consider his run a disappointment at all. Some PPVs he was featured on did better than the year previous, and some better than many previous incarnations of that event for several years. Far from an Austin-like 1998 boost, where WrestleMania jumped 240% or something ridiculous like that, but numbers were holding.

Sometimes you have to be careful interpreting this data. Correlation is not causation, and you can make them fit your bias quite easily. Obviously some things are fairly obvious -- like attributing the rise of WWF in 1998 to Austin/Tyson/McMahon and the drop in WCW to the de-emphasis of Goldberg with Nash taking the book (sorry to sully the halls during Nashvember). But it's very easy to look at the Raw ratings for 2013 and 2014 and interpret them as the fans living and dying with Daniel Bryan. Not to any major extent, but interest in SummerSlam seemed to spike, but then when the screwjob happened, it was back to business as usual and no one cared.

But I'm curious as to what people on here think about business under Bryan. Do you consider him a success? Was he only slowing the decline? Is that even impressive? Personally, it's made me wish Triple H kept his nose out of things. Bryan gets hot so it becomes a routine "the office are heels" storyline and I'm not sure they have the appeal this decade that they think they do. I'd have like to have seen a WWE where Bryan was allowed to win the WWE Title at SummerSlam and actually run with it to see how he did, instead of bombarding people with angle, after angle, after angle in order to try and toy -- and not in the good pro-wrestling way -- with people's patience.

If the measuring stick is steve austin then no

I don't think anyone should be measured against Steve Austin. But then again, who else should you compare him to? I guess he does well compared to everyone not named Steve Austin. I mean, I doubt he topped Cena in terms of merchandise, but Cena was no Austin either.

I think danielson would have been a long term top act. As it happens he was a flash in the pan. But he was doing business. Gates were strong. Neilson wasnt trending down and given the state of the tv market in 2014 thats impressive.

Personally I wasn't a fan of the Daniel Bryan story. Never was a fan of his in ROH either. That said understand WWE going with him in WM 30 but it wasn't for me. They were smart to change their plans and had the guy not been injury prone it might have panned out. Can't predict injuries si its no fault of theirs but they have a guy that truely understands the business and a platform and fans caught on to something that felt real. I don't think it will last and the YES chants have already started to diminish but I think he has some value on the independent scene and with ROH.

You know by now that I'm not on the side of metrics, but I do understand why they're important, and all that considered...he probably didn't HURT anything, but all that he helped was the frustration of the niche fans like myself. His career-ender gave validation to what Triple H was saying about the "B+ player'". If they ain't eatin', I've got nothing to obsess about.

DIdn't have time to become a full-on commercial success unfortunately.

I liked him

Considering that B+ came from Triple H a solid C player who thinks he's an A I'll say it was a complement

Triple H isn't an A, but he definitely isn't a C either. He's a solid B, maybe B+.

A-

I will say this if Triple H is trying to shoehorn himself into a match with you you probably have a very bright future. So part of me will be ecstatic if he wants to work with Joe,Nakamura or Styles.

Maybe B- It just hit me that whenever HBK was around during his second run Triple H went back to looking like a mid-carder.

Vanilla midget, crappy on the Mic but the fans got behind him so he gets a B

I'd argue no but not because he was a failure as a top star but more because his time at the top was really short to bear long term fruit for the WWE. Some of that is WWE's fault for being really stubborn on pulling the trigger for his top stardom rise and supposedly still not wanting him as a top star afterwards.

Cena is probably the only recent big star that could be considered as a big commercial success in the WWE. Mainly because WWE spent over a decade only caring about him and making almost everything important revolve around him. If anyone else was starting to get too hot, WWE either cooled them down or made sure Cena got to leech some of it away.

Roman Reigns and John Cena are the only commercial successes in WWE from 2005 and on.

Cena chased away a large part of the audience. He moves the needle now, but that's largely because of that conditioning. They've tried to do the same thing with Triple H, but it hasn't worked nearly as well.

His run didn't exist in isolation at the end of the day. While he may have been a highlight, from my memory this was during a time when RAW was at its least watchable overall.

It is easy to focus on the main event, but people won't always watch three hours of shite no matter how good the last twenty minutes are.

I go back to what I said before about WWE being so eager to find "the next Hogan" that they're willing to overlook all the Pipers and Jake Roberts' that they have all over their roster. They want to manufacture that next big breakout pop culture phenomenon, and when something bucks the trend of what they think that should be, they tend not to get on board with it and either attempt to stifle it or completely change it... which is sad because they used to be better about capitalizing on the next hot thing.

It's like having a large pile of money on a table, and people keep throwing more onto the pile, but it is all foreign currency. You can easily take that pile of cash to the bank and keep what it translates to, but instead you just leave it there and walk away looking for another pile because it isn't the greenbacks you recognize instantly.

Austin is a funny example, considering how huge he became, but he was one of those guys that Vince didn't see that in initally (much like Cena, and of course DB). When it got over, though, WWE ran with it. Compare that to Daniel Bryan. When Bryan started getting over, they took the opposite philosophy of "Wait... why the fuck do you like *him*? You're not supposed to like him!" and didn't jump on that train nearly as fast as they did with Stone Cold. I mean, imagine if in the midst of all the Austin 3:16 signs and KotR victory, they decided to just not feature him all that well, have him get his ass kicked a lot, then decide he needs to start wearing a J.O.B. Squad t-shirt awhile? We wouldn't be remembering him so fondly about now, and neither would those listed metrics during what actually became Austin's heyday.

That is when competition becomes important. If there were a WCW to compete with the WWE, then a guy like Danielson could have said "I'm a bigger star than this, I'm going to go there" and done something about it. Vince having a monopoly allows him to say "such and such hasn't grabbed the brass ring," and for it to always be either true or a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I still think there must be an extraordinarily scary reason to why the WWE shut down the Daniel Bryan gravy train that goes far beyond the B+ player, vanilla midget, Batista push, Triple H envy, Vince's bias against small wrestlers reasons that we have never been privy too.

lol

cm punk

This. I get why the show is and will continue to be three hours, but sitting through a show that long every week is a big ask unless you fill it with watchable content.

Because it wasn't the gravy train they wanted. Vince has the privilege of being able to pick and choose his own adventure, and he wanted the 10 year plan with Reigns as opposed to riding out Bryan and seeing where it could go in the short-to-mid-term.