On Tues., Nov. 27, a fired up AJ Styles addressed WWE champion Daniel Bryan and the below-the-belt attack & post-match beatdown which allowed Bryan to win the belt and kept Styles off Survivor Series (the first pay-per-view (PPV) AJ was eligible for that he’s missed since his debut with the company at Royal Rumble 2016).
Setting aside the Phenomenal One’s incorrect claim that he never missed a live event in his 371 days holding the title - he probably still wouldn’t like us bringing it up, but he did skip a few shows on the Road to WrestleMania 34 - the promo gave Styles a chance to differentiate his show from Raw, and to compare Bryan to the red brand’s famously part-time champion.
It’s the kind of thing which would probably bother a man of the people like the leader YES! Movement. But as DB explained to us last Tuesday, that guy is gone. Instead...
The old Daniel Bryan wrestled 227 matches in a calendar year, much more than AJ has ever done in his career. Shortly thereafter he needed neck surgery. The New Daniel Bryan is above that sort of masochism. https://t.co/F0BLWGRsf8
— Daniel Bryan (@WWEDanielBryan) November 28, 2018
Here’s hoping the New Daniel Bryan leans into using big words like “masochism”. That’ll help make it so us regular folk want to see him get punched in the face, no matter how much we used to like him.