DANIEL BRYAN
The only reason Daniel Bryan is not higher on this list is because to some extent he already is the next CM Punk. When Punk left back in January, he was scheduled to face Triple H at WrestleMania 30 – the spot that Bryan ended up with. Stipulations moved on from there and by the end of the night Daniel Bryan was WWE Champion. Could that have been CM Punk? We can only speculate…
Obviously Daniel Bryan and the ‘YES! Movement’ had a big part to play with him being inserted into the snoozefest main event that was initially meant to be Randy Boreton vs. Boo-tista. If CM Punk had stayed, nobody could say whether it would have gone the same way due to Punk’s obvious disinterest in his promos. He had slipped into a point where he was phoning his work in and at least some of the fans could see that.
Obviously both men have many similarities once again. Daniel Bryan has most of them all combined into one. He came from the indies, he is small in stature and therefore not the proper look for a WWE Champion and he is an incredibly gifted technical wrestler, all like CM Punk. Both men can strike up the crowd with the microphone, even if they do use differing styles. Punk had a catchphrase with ‘Best in the world’, but it was never intended to be a chant. Bryan’s ‘YES!’ or ‘NO!’ chants are classic ploys from wrestlers. The only thing that you could compare this chant with is Stone Cold’s ‘WHAT?!’ chant from back in the attitude era and that is one that is still going strong today.
Unfortunately as we all know Bryan is out for an unspecified amount of time with his injuries and the news that he needs even more surgery after he apprehended a robber who tried to burgle his house has left many WWE with saddened hearts.
Get well soon D-Bry. We all know that you’re more than a B+ player.