Daniel Bryan vs. The Shield is all but over now, save a match or a few in early 2014. The time now is for Bryan to try and do the same for The Wyatt Family that he did for The Shield, and specifically, to legitimize Bray Wyatt to get him ready for John Cena at WrestleMania.
It sucks, it’s a waste of Bryan, but again…given that it all turns out fine in the end, it’s hard to be all that mad. It is what it is.
This is more perfect TV formula tag work. Bryan, Goldust, and Cody is maybe the best babyface trio to ever regularly work on WWE television. Their only competition comes from a Benoit/Jericho/Edge pairing that we saw a lot in 2004, likewise suffering from some weak links, but Bryan and Goldust together is once again undeniable. The greatest babyface tag team wrestler of all time and then the greatest wrestler of all time, full stop. Both men get to work long FIP sections in this match, and it’s great. You run into the issue then of Cody working the final hot tag run, but he’s good enough at it at this point that it’s not the end of the world. The crowd never comes alive enough for Cody at this point in the way they do for either all-timer on his team, but by this point, he has a good routine. The WWE’s invested in many worse in-ring babyfaces than Cody Rhodes comes off as in this 2013-2014 tag team run, you know?
On the other side…well, god damn, Luke Harper was great. It’s the sort of clarity you get only after someone is gone, but he’s the best big man of an entire generation. He works more against Goldust here than against Bryan (as Bryan is tasked with making Rowan less bad in the same way that he did for Reigns eight months earlier), but it’s hard to complain when that’s such a great pairing. The build for Bryan/Wyatt is also exceptional here, with Bray trying to avoid him until Bryan forces the issue and begins beating the shit out of him, only for Harper and Rowan to save his ass.
In the end, the Wyatts catch Cody with a blind tag off the numbers game, and Wyatt hits the Sister Abby for the win.
Nothing that’s going to blow anyone away, but yet another match in which Bryan looks like the very best wrestler alive, and in which Goldust doesn’t look all that far off. Instructive for the sorts of lists I’m going to be obsessing over for the next week.
HANDWERK 