Daniel Bryan Talks WWE Intercontinental Championship – What He Would Have Done Differently
A new episode of the WWE Network original series “Table for 3” airs tonight. This week Daniel Bryan, Dolph Ziggler, and Ryback sit down and discuss various topics regarding their careers. A brief clip of tonight’s episode has been released by WWE.com. In the clip, Daniel Bryan talks about what plans he had for the WWE Intercontinental Championship before an injury forced him out of action.
“One of the things that I wanted to do when I won the Intercontinental Championship was [to] not be on Raw. Because as soon as the Intercontinental Championship was on Raw and especially with John being the U.S. Champion, it’s automatically on the back burner behind all these other things.”
“And, so, have it only be on Smackdown and have me only be on Smackdown to where at least when you saw it [the Intercontinental Championship] it was important.”
Bryan had won the Intercontinental Championship in a seven-man ladder match at WrestleMania 31 back on March 29th of this year. This made him the sixth wrestler in history to be a WWE “Grand Slam” winner, which is when a wrestler has won every active championship in the WWE (with the exception of female-exclusive championships). He was quickly sidelined soon after his WrestleMania 31 victory due to a concussion-related injury forcing him to relinquish his title. These comments from Bryan offer a unique look at how he was trying to make the Intercontinental Championship feel important again.
Mark’s reaction:
WrestleMania 31 left me feeling very excited about the future of the U.S. and I.C. Championships. With two main-event level wrestlers in John Cena and Daniel Bryan holding what are looked upon as mid-card titles, offered a nice change of pace and an opportunity to elevate the status of these titles. Cena went on to do exactly that. The U.S. Championship feels like an important title again and he has helped put over man fresh faces in the process. I have no doubt in my mind that Bryan would have done the same and these comments just confirm that.
This idea of Bryan appearing exclusively on Smackdown is an interesting idea that not only helps the I.C. Championship but Smackdown as well. More people would make sure to tune into Smackdown every week if they wanted to see Bryan wrestle and like he said, when he would then show up on a PPV or a Raw out of nowhere, it would make the I.C. championship feel that much more important. If Bryan ever did show up on Raw it would be cool to just have a little backstage segment with him where he’s just there to watch the show and not compete or anything.
Although this is a nice idea, I’m not sure if the WWE would have gone through with it for two reasons. First of all, since Raw is a three hour show, they need to have all the big names they can to make sure ratings don’t dip too badly. Secondly, the WWE has given up on Smackdown completely. Nothing of significant importance has happened on the show in a long time and major storylines don’t progress there either. Now this mentality could change as quickly as next year when Smackdown moves to the USA Network. However, I feel that they’ll try hard to make it a must watch show again for the first few months, until the writing team becomes over worked from all the weekly hours of programming and they just go back to not caring as usual. Eh, here’s to hoping for the best.
Would you like to see this idea still happen when Bryan makes his return to the squared circle? Do you have any hope that Smackdown will ever be taken seriously again? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.