WWE RAW Report (December 29, 2014): Daniel Bryan returns to end 2014 on a high

Calling 2014 a disappointing year for the WWE feels like a gigantic understatement, especially when you consider where the year started. CM Punk entrenched himself as a top star in the WWE, even if his card placement and creative direction did not always appear to reflect that. Meanwhile, Daniel Bryan continued his unstoppable rise to the top. Week after week, he put on some of the best wrestling I’ve ever witnessed on Monday Night RAW starting back in 2013. TH over at the wrestling blog called that period the zenith of RAW and I completely agree.

Then things started to fall apart.

CM Punk abruptly left the WWE after a stellar performance in the Royal Rumble. Daniel Bryan stepped in and took Punk’s assumed program against HHH at Wrestlemania XXX and parlayed it into a title shot in the same night. The year started with the return of a babyface Batista winning a title shot at the Rumble, but Bryan’s rise simply wouldn’t stop nor should it have.

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After achieving his Wrestlemania dream, and marrying Brie Bella, Bryan began to fall apart. Literally. His father passed away after his honeymoon and he soon found himself sidelined with a severe injury that required surgery. The WWE’s biggest star and current champion now found himself on the sideline, treading water and hoping a recovery would be swift, but it was anything but.

Meanwhile, the WWE floundered. The departure of Punk and Bryan’s injury remained the constant perma-cloud over everything the WWE did. The biggest buzz that the WWE managed to generate all year came from part-timers in Brock Lesnar and Sting. Sure, the WWE appeared to toy with the idea of pushing new faces such as Seth Rollins, Dean Ambrose, and Roman Reigns, but everything ended up coming back to the safety net of John Cena and the hope that part-timers would help secure WWE Network subscriptions and PPV buys while the WWE tried to figure everything out.

That uncertainty reflected in the weekly product. As much as Vince McMahon claimed that the main roster consistently failed to grab his “brass ring”, anytime someone appeared to near it, someone would move the it further away. Programs and angles fizzled or were discarded completely before they truly gained any heat. The ones that managed to survive never felt fully planned and payoffs were either disappointing or their importance immediately dismissed the following week.

So, when Daniel Bryan tweeted that he found himself at a crossroads in his career and would address the WWE Universe on RAW, a RAW hosted by two stars, Edge and Christian, who also found their careers cut far too short due to injury, I braced for the worst. Not just for the sad news that Bryan’s career could be over, but for the weight of such news to drag the final RAW of 2014 down to even further depths. I mean, after everything else that has happened this year in the WWE, it wouldn’t have been a shock.

Thankfully, the exact opposite happened. It was as if Daniel Bryan gathered the entire roster and all of creative and injected all of them with the same fire he manages to put into every single fan as his jumps down the ramp screaming “YES!” at the top of his lungs.

The majority of the matches throughout the show were fantastic. Stories found themselves injected with logic. The announce team appeared to finally care about the smaller details to push stories. Ryback got an entire segment to explain what “Feed Me More” really means and did so by using his both his pre-Ryback gimmick WWE and personal history, a kayfabe breaking rarity. Cesaro even got a brief CM Punk-like moment to air out his grievances with his frustrating 2014, almost seemingly as an apology for being required to do the job to a returning Bad News Barrett (unsurprisingly, the duo put on a nice, beat-the-hell-out-of-each-other match).

After having his own Wrestlemania moment in 2014, Cesaro found himself on the wrong end of the WWE’s whims, but got a brief chance to speak about it this week. Photo credit: WWE

Simply put, the entire show felt different from top to bottom. Even before Bryan’s announcement that he would return at the Royal Rumble, I thoroughly enjoyed the whole episode for the first time in what felt like ages. I became invested in what was going on in front of me and everything had my full focus.

As a new year approaches, it seems as if change is in the air once again. Here’s hoping that Bryan’s return and this episode of RAW is a sign that the entire WWE is ready to continue down this path as the Road to Wrestlemania approaches.

Five Takeaways from the Night

Ryback’s promo was a rare kayfabe-breaking moment in the WWE that managed to build his character into a babyface anyone can get behind. Photo credit: WWE

1) Ryback builds his character by breaking it.

Earlier, I mentioned that this was a rare kayfabe-breaking moment that we don’t see in the WWE. It was also one of the most logical, level-headed, and simple promos that I’ve heard in some time.

Ryback started with a simple truth: we don’t really know him. That’s just a simple fact. He’s just this Big Guy™ that came out and started destroying no-name jobbers and screaming “Feed Me More!”. People chanted “Goldberg” at him, not as a compliment, but as a “we’ve seen this bit before” snarky response. To put it another way: he was just big muscle dude that appeared to be very hungry all the time.

Then he peeled away his layers by talking about who he was before Ryback. He was “The Silverback” in Tough Enough. He was Skip Sheffield and a member of the Nexus. He is a human being that almost saw his career ended due to an injury.

He saw loads of negativity in his life. He thought he failed at his dream. He was down on himself, possibly depressed form the sounds of it too. He managed to pick himself back up, eat all the negativity, turn it positive and ask to be fed more.

“Feed Me More” now makes sense. Ryback makes sense. Throw all the negativity you want at him, it won’t matter. That means you too, CM Punk. Call Ryback a “steroid guy”, stupid, or a terrible wrestler trying to hurt people. Feed him more.

Put him in a program with Rusev. Yes, Ryback’s aware that he isn’t a logical choice as far as a USA vs. Russia angle goes. That doesn’t matter, he just wants to destroy another Big Guy™ because that’s what he does. Feed him more.

I’m 100% behind Ryback now as a babyface. I can’t even remember the last time someone larger than life portray a character this relatable. Just take a look at his Twitter timeline–it’s got people praising him for making a positive impact on their own lives. That just happened on WWE programming.

Feed him more.

You could certainly say that Edge and Christian’s appearance on RAW reeked of awesomeness. Photo credit: WWE

2) Edge and Christian killed it as guest hosts.

First off, mad respect to Edge for wearing a Sami Zayn shirt. Second, this is how you need to do it, guest hosts/GMs. Or, more accurately, this is how you need to book such guests.

Edge and Christian still have their great sense of comedic timing, switching effortlessly between puns, sophomoric, fourth wall breaking, and smart humor like it is nothing. There’s something for everyone to like in what they do and they don’t rely on a single method as a crutch.

Beyond their wise-cracking, they felt like an integral part of the show. They appeared in multiple segments, but they never felt like they wore out their welcome. In fact, in the opening segment, when they announced the big matches of the night and their segment got hi-jacked by Cena and Lesnar, they just left. They didn’t need to force themselves into the segment any further because they had no place in it and they knew it.

However, that didn’t mean that their presence on the show didn’t have a big impact. A backstage segment with John Cena and Edge (again, Christian used a wise exit in this scene) set up a mutual respect between the two that would become incredibly important later in the night when Seth Rollins threatened to paralyze Edge.

They felt important, but they didn’t overshadow any member of the current roster. Guest hosts should be catalysts and not the main attraction. These two pulled off the gig perfectly.

There should be no doubt–Seth Rollins one of the best heels the WWE has seen. Photo credit: WWE

3) Seth Rollins has fully transformed into the biggest jerk on the show and it’s great.

“I’m still gonna kill him” – Seth Rollins, a guy that once looked lost on the mic, cementing his legacy as one of the company’s top heels.

After Daniel Bryan’s emotional return, I had zero expectations for this “main event” segment. But here’s Seth Rollins attacking two retired superstars, not giving a damn about the injuries that put them in retired status, and reminding everyone that Edge is a husband and a father, but he has zero issues Crub Stomping him on his Money in the Bank briefcase.

It was all a brilliant con to get The Authority reinstated and back in power. It had to eventually happen at some point because Sting staring down HHH at Survivor Series would end up a total waste. Better yet, the way we got there actually made sense for a change.

Cena and Edge set up their mutual respect for each other with Cena going as far to call him one of the few truly good people in the business. This is rather big considering that Cena really doesn’t have a history of sticking up for people on RAW on a regular basis, but then again, he often only seems to pay most people lip-service respect and what he established with Edge went far deeper.

So when Seth threatens Edge’s fragile neck, Cena being drawn out isn’t out of the blue. Further, Seth managed to manipulate the entire situation to ensure that Cena had zero choice but to put The Authority back in power. And to top it all off, he still tried “to kill” Edge because he’s Seth Rollins and that’s just who he is.

Seth has had one hell of a 2014. I can’t wait to see how his eventual cash-in goes because I have a feeling it could be one of the most underhanded cash-ins of all time at the rate he’s going.

The Ascension make their debut on RAW. Photo credit: WWE

4) If you’re going to go full ridiculous with The Ascension, you might as well commit to it.

I may be turning a corner with The Ascensions ridiculous gimmick. Yeah, it’s a Road Warriors re-make for the 21st century, but pro wrestling lives in the absurd. So if you’re going to go with the bit, commit to it fully. The WWE did that.

Everything from the Titantron video to the facepaint (which bleeds into Konnor’s hair!) to their ring attire was just 100% over-the-top. Yeah, the match was sloppy, but their debut was much more about the “look at THAT” factor rather than what they did in the ring.

The tag team division needs some new life injected into it. Moreover, they need characters. The Usos are just dudes in face paint that jump around. Miz and Mizdow have a solid gimmick, but we all know the split will eventually come. Stardust seemingly had something fresh to bring to the table, but the WWE seems to have a taken a hard turn away from wherever it was they were initially going.

So yeah, let’s just get weird. Why not?

You know you hear J.R. screaming in your head that Rusev’s about to kill Dolph Ziggler. Photo credit: WWE

5) The perfect time for a non-finish.

I’m not sure what the live reaction was on Twitter to the end of this match as I had to watch via DVR, but Dolph Ziggler vs. Rusev is one of those times in which I think a non-finish is the smartest solution.

This was the first match of the show and pitted two people that we haven’t really seen go toe-to-toe so it was fresh. That being said, both of these guys are in the middle of a huge push and need protection. You really can’t have either of these guys lose. Further, you also really can’t book Rusev to beat Ziggler via cheating. Rusev’s entire aura is built on being a monster that just demolishes people. If he starts taking shortcuts to win, the undefeated gimmick dies and Rusev loses all his heat.

Instead, you just let Rusev CRUSH and DQ himself after a hell of a match to get the crowd going. Simple enough.

Would I love to see a clean finish to this match? You bet, but I’m also perfectly fine with keeping that powder dry for later.