Bryan with the MITB Briefcase |
Daniel Bryan surprised a lot of people by winning the
Smackdown Money in the Bank match. The following Smackdown, Bryan announced to
Michael Cole, who has always been critical of him, that he would be cashing it
in at Wrestlemania, making him the first person since Rob Van Dam to actually
cash it in for a match.
However, since then Bryan seemed to go on a losing streak.
He lost to Wade Barrett at Summerslam and wasn’t featured on PPV, only
wrestling in the dark matches beforehand. It seemed that his decision to cash
in his contract at Wrestlemania was coming back to haunt him.
Show persuading Bryan to cash it in his MITB contract on an unconscious Mark Henry |
Opportunities in which to cash in the contract came when The
Big Show started feuding with Mark Henry over the World Heavyweight Championship.
Show tried to get Bryan to cash it in after he had laid Henry out on Smackdown
at the beginning of November, only for Henry to take out Bryan with a World’s
Strongest Slam before he had a chance. After Bryan cashed it in two weeks later
and won, it was overturned by General Manager Teddy Long, and it looked like it was
increasingly unlikely that Bryan would keep his promise to cash it in at
Wrestlemania.
At TLC last Sunday, The Big Show finally defeated Mark Henry
in a chairs match to become the World Heavyweight Champion. Henry,
understandably, did not take that too well and DDT’ed Show onto a chair. Bryan,
after reading Edge’s manual: “How to be the Ultimate Opportunist”, could not
resist and cashed in his contract to become the new World Heavyweight Champion
to raucous cheers from the Baltimore crowd.
In your face Cole!! |
Michael Cole has said since that Bryan is a hypocrite and,
although he’s saying that because he doesn’t like Bryan, he does have a point.
Bryan had promised that he would cash in his contract at Wrestlemania and not
do what most MITB winners have done and take advantage of the champion being attacked
by someone else. Bryan was, in effect, going to give the champion a chance to
fairly defend his title.
However, to be fair to Bryan, if he did cash in his contract
at Wrestlemania, he would be facing either The Big Show or Mark Henry. Both of
those guys are over 400 lbs and are twice Bryan’s weight. Bryan is one of the
most technically gifted wrestlers that I have ever seen but it would be no
contest in terms of strength and he will be easily overpowered by either one of
them. Bryan probably realised that he might struggle to defeat them and knew
that, in order to become World Heavyweight Champion, he would have to seize the
next available opportunity. If the Big Show is unhappy about what happened to
him, he only has himself to blame. He was the one who effectively planted the
seed in Bryan’s head about cashing in his contract early.
It will be interesting to see where they go from here. They
could turn Bryan heel, which judging by the very positive crowd reaction would
be insane; or turn Show heel, which might not be advisable since we already have
one monster heel on Smackdown. One idea that I saw would be really good and you
don’t need either of them to turn heel. The Big Show could say that he respects
Bryan cashing it in but he wants a rematch to see if Bryan deserves to be the
Champion. Bryan beats Show cleanly at
the Rumble and Show raises his hand as a show of respect.
In terms of Bryan being a hypocrite or an opportunist, I
would say that he is both. Yes, he is a hypocrite because he didn’t cash in his
contract when he said he would. However, the feud between The Big Show and Mark
Henry gave him way too many opportunities to resist. Judging by the crowd
reaction at TLC and the following RAW, the fans seem to be happy enough that
Bryan is the Champion. For those people who are unhappy for Bryan’s
hypocritical behaviour, I’m sorry but if you had the MITB contract and you could
either cash it in to give the 400+lb Champion a chance in a proper wrestling
match or cash it in when that guy has no chance to defend himself, what would you
choose?
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