WWE delivers yet another great episode of Friday Night Smackdown on SyFy, this one from Nov. 25, 2011.
There were a few notable things to happen on this episode, chief among them the push of Daniel Bryan. My colleague Sergio tackled the issue of how Bryan has been booked a lot better than it looks at first glance and this episode of Smackdown essentially shows how well off he really is.
The show opened with a Mark Henry promo (which was utterly brilliant, as usual), that led to Big Show knocking him out. At this point, Bryan hit the ring to cash in his Money in the Bank briefcase, to a growing enthusiasm from the crowd. When he rolled Henry over and got the pin, the arena exploded and it just felt right.
Then, Teddy Long came out and reversed the decision, saying Henry wasn't cleared to compete, so the pinfall wouldn't stand and Henry was still the champion.
This was brilliant because it was an easy way to gauge how the crowd would react to Bryan actually winning the title from Henry while teasing that he can actually pull it off, if only through nefarious means. The crowd loved it and the few that weren't sold on him had a reason to believe in him. Plus, he gets to keep his briefcase to cash it in at WrestleMania 28.
Oh and Henry even got heat from all this. That's like 48 wins in one segment, folks. This is the kind of booking we wish we had on Raw and complain for so endlessly. It's amazing.
Best of all was the fact that Bryan was still placed in a Fatal Four-way in the main event to determine the next contender to the title. The winner would earn a shot at Henry on the live episode of Smackdown next Tuesday night.
And Bryan won that match with a cool finish, which was also well received by the crowd. Not only that, he was given an endorsement by none other than Randy Orton, who simply nodded in approval, putting Bryan over even more. This was the Smackdown we can look back on and officially say that Daniel Bryan was made in WWE.