On WWE Monday Night Raw, Stephanie McMahon announced that next week, she expects Daniel Bryan to do what's "best for business" and surrender his WWE World Heavyweight Championship as he recovers from his neck injury and surgery. In my opinion, Daniel Bryan either relinquishing the title or being stripped of it by The Authority would be a horrible mistake that would have serious repercussions to Bryan's career prospects both in front of the cameras and backstage.
I am also not alone in these sentiments. In this week's Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer talks in-depth about the Bryan injury and why stripping him of the title would be a bad decision all the way around:
"...unless Bryan is going to be out three months or longer, taking the title from him is a very bad move. It's hard to tell this early for sure regarding the affect on popularity, but the portrayal of his character since winning the title at WrestleMania, and particularly in the past two weeks, has been questionable at best, and while I hate to overreact to one city's crowd reactions of clearly a minority of fans, the difference in Bryan's reaction coming out this past week with the last several months was hard to miss."
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Meltzer goes on to say that the poor booking of Daniel Bryan during the recent Kane storyline has not helped him stay as popular as he was during his red hot rise to the top of the WWE. Also, Meltzer makes a great point about Bryan recently having so much camera time with his wife Brie Bella and how that hasn't helped him either. He explains, that "...aligning him so closely with his wife, Brie Bella, in almost every scene he's in on Raw, hasn't helped him. You don't see John Cena in every scene with Nikki Bella, nor Natalya with Tyson Kidd or Jimmy Uso with Naomi."
Meltzer then states that while there is obviously a crossover angle at play here as WWE promotes the Daniel Bryan wedding to Brie Bella on Total Divas, his screen time on Raw with Brie Bella and how he has been portrayed during this feud with Kane is just not helping Bryan at this point.
CB's Analysis: Like I said, I am not alone in thinking that Daniel Bryan being forced to surrender or be stripped of the WWE World Heavyweight Championship is a good idea, yet I can see all of those WWE officials backstage who are Bryan naysayers excited about this prospects of cutting short his title run.
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Of course, and as Meltzer stated, if Bryan is going to miss three months or longer, then WWE doesn't really have a choice. My biggest fear is that WWE will choose to take this course of action regardless of how much time Bryan misses, and as a result his title run and return will both wind up looking weaker than they should.
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