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I can personally ignore the MMA stuff. Not saying everyone can, or that they’re obliged to. I can disconnect them as separate sports. But I don’t begrudge anyone for not being that into Punk. When he was gone, even his wrestling run seemed overhyped to me. It was largely based around him being an other to a frustrating product, more so than him being actually as good as I was trying to will him to be.
He was my Sunday Night Heat darlings getting a chance. I wanted something else so bad. But Punk was not the guy that John Cena was, for example. Although I was too in the bubble to see it at the time.
Bryan is one of my favorite workers ever. He’s just been featured in a prominent role on WWE TV and has never truly embarrassed himself. I’m genuinely not surprised if he were an actual bigger needle-mover. My problem with him in AEW is that he’s surrounded by a circus that makes what he represents so much more trivial, no matter how good he actually is.
I don’t blame people for still loving him, but I have actually seen people who feel that in their own ordering of kayfabe — trying to make this shit make sense — he got his ass kicked in WWE and went to AEW to be a big fish. People think way differently about professional wrestling than the Observer would have you believe.
I’m not saying this is a popular opinion or whatever. But there are a lot of people who just can’t seem to, at least at this point, get into the idea of Bryan Danielson vs. what he was as Daniel Bryan — right, wrong or otherwise. Meanwhile a lot of AEW fanboys are throwing their arms up like this is Nash and Hall joining WCW in 1996.
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