The best thing WWE can do with its television is to get lazy.
With a lot of creative input, you run the risk of someone high up getting involved and putting together the sort of television they love or crafting the sorts of segments that they adore. Dean Ambrose with a hot dog cart or the Roman Reigns “Jack & The Beanstalk” promo, for example. But when they get really and truly lazy, the result is typically just surrendering large swaths of the program to matches and letting them be. It’s an easy way to cut out a significant chunk of the show that nobody has to write for, something that they don’t have to care about.
It’s been one of the hallmarks of the year, but it rarely happens quite like this.
This is a non-title match. It’s not even explicitly stated that Bryan gets anything if he wins. It’s just a match that got made because John Cena, again doing the right thing at virtually all times, challenged Orton and The Authority to book the match.
And yet, they get around half an hour of real time and over twenty minutes of television time to work together. In terms of matches with no true immediate stakes, you have to go back to the mid 2000s to find another match this long on free television, and it’s once again Randy Orton against a short buzzsaw who regularly bent television wrestling to his strengths in the same way that Bryan has been able to in 2013. It’s just about as great in all the same ways, from Orton working significantly smarter and harder than usual to not get blown out of the water by the best wrestler on television to said buzzsaw just going completely insane in every possible way.
Hard to see the similarity, I know.
This one’s nearly perfect.
Everything they do either has consequence or absolutely rules. That might mean it’s a piece of great selling, it’s a terrific little use of multi-match storytelling or learned psychology, or it might just mean that it’s a strike that’s especially nasty. To that point, pretty much every strike in this from Bryan’s kicks to Orton’s cut off back elbows or clotheslines to the dueling European Uppercuts they trade a time or two here is especially nasty. Talk up some NXT UK match in front of no people or whatever else in recent years up as some all time brutal and violent WWE match. This never makes a show of it in the same way, but it’s purposefully violent in a way that none of those matches are. The violence is not the point of the match, and so the violence on display is much more effective by way of being an addition to something that already ruled. That’s the difference.
But let’s talk about the individual performances here too.
Randy Orton is the crispest and stiffest version of himself that’s ever existed. He also portrays a kind of desperation here better than he’s ever done before. It works because it comes out of shock initially, and gets more and more violent and grasping when things just never really work like they should. There’s a great moment early on in this when Bryan is tearing up Randy’s leg when Orton gets him back with a headbutt. Orton buys himself a few moments of control but he gets cut open a little on the eyebrow in the process. A mark let on him and not on Daniel Bryan, this clear visual indication that he’s not as tough as Bryan and not as tough as he thinks he is. Orton spends the match getting more and more upset, losing more and more of his composure, and getting so desperate. When Bryan goes to the leg again, Orton escapes a second time by simply biting at Bryan’s leg, before then going more after the arm. It’s such a cool performance because it’s not only wild and desperate, but because he eventually shows something more legitimate when he can get his head back about him. There’s still a sense of danger there and something for Our Hero to overcome.
As for Our Hero?
Every so often in the WWE run of Daniel Bryan, he’ll get a chance like this to cut loose and to remind everyone paying attention of how things really are, that he’s still the singular best wrestler alive with all things being equal, and this is one of the finest ever versions of this. It’s a complete tour de force, a Bryan performance that’s powerful and mean and so impressive in so many ways. Bryan controls Orton early on and it’s some of the most hostile work he’s ever done in the WWE. This is a guy with a big heel run in 2012 and a big heel run in 2018-2019, and this is still maybe the most vicious and hateful performance he’s ever had, coming in the middle of his run as the most popular wrestler in the world. And he loses none of that, both because Orton himself is so despicable and because he’s still so likeable while doing it. It’s an aggression that Bryan didn’t have in the series of title matches that they had on pay-per-view in the fall, no longer really afraid of anything because nothing’s on the line here and also a little because he’s finally got this fucking weasel back into the ring.
It’s a match full of teases and payoffs or Bryan too, and each of them is so great. The previously shown Tope Suicida stop gets paid off with one of Bryan’s best ones ever. One of his big comebacks in the second half comes when he gets fed up with Orton’s shit and bites that cut on his eyebrow before punching away at it. If the cut itself is this visual representation of the entire story, that when Orton throws himself against Bryan, Orton is the one who comes away broken open, then Bryan’s comeback here finally attacks Orton on that level.
Then of course, there is the selling performance when the arm is targeted. Bryan is a better leg seller than an arm seller, but he does such a great job here. Orton can get scatterbrained sometimes, but Bryan does an all-time great job o sending him out little cues that always refocuses Orton on the arm. A lot of times when a mid match limb focus isn’t the biggest deal in the world, people will transition out of it, and Bryan’s done this before. It’s not the end of the world. I think I get a reputation sometimes as a stickler here, but it really isn’t the end of the world so long as someone pays respect to the work that’s happened. There’s a lot of matches that I love that adhere to this sort of a thing. That being said, this is the sort of performance that I really really love. It’s the sort of attention to detail and respect for my time that endears me to someone forever. Bryan never forgets it. It’s not some 100% perfect selling performance, he’s not Toshiaki Kawada in 1993, but it never ever doesn’t matter. Bryan can use the left arm to block punches, he can use it to grab holds in desperation, but there’s always the sell that comes after, be it big or small. They’re building something here, and all the pieces matter.
Forget about it as the best performance of Bryan’s WWE run so far. Remove the qualifiers. I cannot say with true unbridled confidence that this isn’t a top five career performance for Bryan up to this point. It’s the sort of thing that young and aspiring wrestlers should be forced to watch in the same way they made people in OVW watch Benoit vs. Regal, because there’s absolutely zero fat on this thing, and especially in Bryan’s performance.
The construction of the thing also stands out in such a big way. There’s a usual way of doing things for both wrestlers at this point, and this match eschews so much of that. Things are changed up in a really novel way, resulting in an unpredictable and incredibly interesting match. In an environment as strictly regimented and controlled as the WWE is, any difference immediately stands out in a big way to anyone paying attention, and this is such a different and cool match. Bryan’s big rally is constantly cut off or stymied in some way until the very end, and it all comes in such a rush. Bryan manages his big hold twice before the comeback ever comes, and it always feels like Randy knows by the last quarter or so of this match that he can’t really beat Bryan one on one. He meters out his big offensive spots, save the RKO, in attempts to cut Bryan off, and when the big run finally comes, Orton has almost nothing left. Bryan’s big run in the last minute or so is outright furious too. There’s the dive, the dropkick outside, the dropkick off the top, and all the big kicks. You grow accustomed to WWE comebacks leading into prolonged finishing stretches with all these big counters for a few minutes, a finisher kickout or two, and none of that happens. There’s nothing showy about it. It’s desperate and mean and so incredibly frantic.
When Bryan finally can’t be held back any longer, it’s this relatively uninterrupted run of ass kicking. He’s better than Randy Orton at everything, by the end of the match it’s clear, and Randy Orton’s only recourse is this lunging low blow for an obvious DQ after ducking a kick. Randy delivers it with a real punchiness and spite, with a relieved look that makes it feel like both a total surrender and a real “fuck you” at the end when that turns into a smile at having escaped. Bryan proved everything he’d ever have to prove, and Randy’s only recourse left is to deny him the finish that was fast approaching. Bryan outclassed him on every level, survived almost everything save for the one move that Orton seemed afraid to even attempt, but with this petty little decision, Orton robs he and the audience of any closure and even with the last half hour proving that it’s all illusion and corporate bullshit, he hangs onto the illusion for just a little while longer.
The funny thing is, of course, that they could have ended it here.
The Bryan thing has gotten so over because he hasn’t lost clean in over a year, because he’s had all this great build and overcome so much. Losing clean to top heel Randy Orton here could have killed it. Giving him the clean win and moving on was also an option. Not unheard of to give the #2 babyface a big TV win before moving on with other plans. Shawn over Cena in London, and what have you. But by having this match, allowing them to build up such a big and great thing and to tell the story they told, before having Bryan screwed over once again, it’s another clear indication that we’re not actually done here. Intentional or not, they brought the story back up, advanced it, and then once again avoided finishing it. That’s how you make people think the story isn’t actually over yet. Incredible big brain stuff to bring this up again out of nowhere, tell the world Bryan is still the best and that he’s still being denied, and then not expect anyone to get mad. Much like the finish itself, it’s hard to be mad about it at all when it all turns out fine in the end. But it is incredibly funny.
It’s very rare that a match that I already thought this much of gets better for me on a third or fourth watch, but this did. In retrospect, I feel foolish to think that I was ever past a point in which a Daniel Bryan match and performance could floor me, but this time, it floored me. It’s as complete and coherent a main event professional wrestling match as it is a one-match argument for Daniel Bryan as the best wrestler in the world, the wrestler of the year, and the greatest of all time.
Like its only other rival for free televised wrestling in 2013, this is the frustrating sort of thing WWE gives you every so often, this idealized version of what professional wrestling can be. One of the crown jewels of this 2013-2014 run and a match that should be talked up as one of the all time television greats.
Having said all of that, it’s also hard to say after this watch through it feels incomplete, or that the non-finish robs this match of a single thing.
Because it doesn’t, not really. The cheap disqualification feels like the natural finish to the match at this point in the rivalry. It’s a bullshit heel finish that works, that works in the same way the best Ric Flair ones worked. The match is all about Orton getting more and more aggressive, looking like maybe the best version of himself that’s ever existed, only for it to not ever be enough. I know better than to ascribe any sort of real intention of it being this stopgap and refresher course before the ROAD TO WRESTLEMANIA begins in earnest, but given the way that everything turned out, it’s perfect as what it is. Because Bryan eventually got another shot and one after that and made good, this is picture perfect for what it’s supposed to be. There are little things about this that aren’t perfect. Randy Orton’s transition selling of the leg isn’t totally there. But for the most part, we see the best version that’s ever existed of an all-time system player, we see Daniel Bryan getting to be arguably the best and inarguably the most well rounded version of himself that’s ever existed, with the time to create the best ever version of their match together and working towards the finish they had instead of just throwing it on there at the end. It’s one of the singular greatest builds to a fuck finish ever, before it’s executed with the sort of manic desperation, ruthlessness, and pure aplomb that makes it stand out on its own too.
The exclamation point at the end of an arguable career year for both men, even if the year isn’t over yet.
One of the very best matches in the history of televised professional wrestling, a modern version of the December 1985 Ric Flair vs. Ron Garvin classic, and the fact that I’m not 100% positive if it’s the first or second best WWE television match of the year is as strong of a statement as I could possibly make about the quality of matches that they were putting on television in 2013, whether fully intending to or not.
HANDWERK 