It’s no secret to anyone that reads my regular Raw Revisited column that I’m not the biggest HHH fan in the world – I may even be the smallest, and I’m 6 foot 5 mind you!
If you go all the way back to when he joined the company, he sucked up to the right people and started hanging around with Shawn Michaels, Kevin Nash and the rest of the Kliq. Go forward almost 20 years and he’s basically running the show! As soon as Vince shuffles off this mortal coil with that ridiculous swagger he has, HHH and his man-wife will be in full control. That’s what I would consider to be the darkest possible timeline!
Like him or hate him, this year at the 30th anniversary of WrestleMania, he will be going up against my absolute favourite wrestler of the past 15 years – Daniel Bryan. A lot has happened over the past few weeks, and we’ll get to that, but to really analyse the history leading up to this match, we need to go all the way back to August 18th 2013 – Summerslam 2013.
The swerve that a few people saw coming, including myself, but none of us wanted to believe!
A lot of very frustrating stuff has happened between then and now, including a lot of Authoritative flip-flopping to appease the crowd, with HHH and Stephanie not being able to decide whether to embrace their villainy or go for the cheap pop.
Some parts of it felt like they were building to something bigger. So much bad stuff never got addressed. Either that, or it was just plain discarded along the way, so here’s a brief summary of the key points that were used to both fuel the current rivalry and/or were discarded along the way:
- Shawn Michaels’ Sweet Chin Music to Daniel Bryan (discarded the next night on Raw)
- HHH getting kneed in the face (which led to the aforementioned Sweet Chin Music)
- Bray Wyatt saying “the devil made me do it” (which has never been addressed, and led to Bryan joining the Wyatt family for 3 weeks before the storyline was dropped)
There was also a very frustrating point in time where Big Show used Daniel Bryan to get over and took his spot in the main-event, which failed SPECTACULARLY.
Before we move on, I have to address the tattooed straight-edge elephant in the room. Yes, CM Punk was scheduled to face HHH at WrestleMania but he “took his ball and went home” or “pulled an Austin” as they say, leading us into this new situation. Truth be told, this new match just makes more sense than Punk vs HHH ever did.
Yes, Punk is anti-authority and it would’ve worked, but Daniel Bryan has been getting consistently and persistently screwed over for 7-8 months. This is a redemption story, plain and simple. And not in that John Cena way where he “has” to win to prove that he’s better than someone, or that he can overcome the odds. This is about Daniel Bryan slaying the demon that has been after him for 8 months.
And as worried as some people might be that HHH will un-sheathe his magical shovel and send Bryan into mid-card oblivion, I’m here to be the voice of reason and stand up for HHH.
“What?!” I hear you say. Is he really sticking up for the king of shovelling? Yes. Yes I am. Because whether you like it or not, sometimes HHH does do what’s best for business.
He made the Undertaker look like a million bucks for 2 years straight at WrestleMania. He may have beaten Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania last year, but he lost at SummerSlam the year before and at Extreme Rules the month after WM29, giving Lesnar 2 wins out of 3.
There are more instances of HHH burying people than there are of him doing the right thing and helping people get over, but this is too important and even someone as egotistical as HHH needs to realise that.
The why of this match is incredibly clear, the how happened last week in a truly memorable moment. The internet seems divided on how they feel about this segment, but I feel that it’ll go down as one of the top Raw moments in history, alongside the Austin beer truck and the Angle milk truck.
Some people argue that it devalues Bryan a bit because it (kayfable-wise) took the literal hijacking of Raw to get HHH to agree to a match with Daniel Bryan. I couldn’t disagree more.
Yes, that’s the how of the match, but the execution, the performances from everyone (especially Stephanie McMahon!), and the end result were perfect. The stipulation added as a result of the Occupy Raw segment was that if Daniel Bryan wins the match, he gets a spot in the main-event match for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship alongside Randy Orton and Batista.
But this week’s Raw added a simultaneously intriguing – and worrying – stipulation.
We now know that we’ll definitely have a triple-threat match in the main-event because if HHH beats Daniel Bryan, he’ll be put in the main-event with Orton and Batista. Do you hear that? That’s the collective sound of the hearts of the entire Daniel Bryan fanbase sinking! But again, fear not.
HHH isn’t doing this for his ego and it’s not because it’s actually going to happen. All he’s doing, is trolling. And trolling hard!
I can understand why people are worried. We’ve been in situations like this before. And I’m 99% sure that if the CM Punk vs Triple H match had gone ahead, Punk wouldn’t have won that match, much less added a stipulation that if he won, he’d be inserted into the main-event, because the only person that fans want to see in that match is Daniel Bryan!
I’m not going to touch on the possibility of/foregone conclusion that Daniel Bryan will be in the main-event, or maybe even the remote possibility that HHH will. Instead, I’ll defer to my esteemed colleague Adam O’Brien, who will be covering that match in his article starting this Sunday (23rd March).
The next article in my series will take a look at the build-up to this match, along with some ways that I would have improved it. Keep an eye out for that next Wednesday (26th March) at 6pm.
Until then, discuss, share and comment as much as you can, and let’s all talk about WrestleMania because for wrestling fans, this is our Superbowl, our Valhalla, and the most wonderful time of the year!
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