The Big Show, Daniel Bryan and Flipping the Script on Cashing In

Turn 'im bad, yo
Photo Credit: WWE.com

Two good guys have ever won and cashed in Money in the Bank briefcases in history. One was Rob Van Dam, who cashed in honorably on John Cena at One Night Stand. The other was CM Punk, who did it twice as a babyface. The first time was on Edge, who was seen as getting what he deserved. The second time was on Jeff Hardy, and it was the impetus to turn him heel. Given the rhetoric behind how sneaky cash-ins should be treated, it's a total bad guy trope.

Everyone thought that Daniel Bryan cashing in his briefcase on a prone Big Show would lead to him turning to the dark side. Big Show is a popular wrestler. Obviously, he's not as popular as Hardy was when Punk picked him off, but they ran a risk. That being said, any lingering doubt of Bryan's flickering popularity was laid to rest when he got cheers increasing in volume with the progression of the night. Any dip in his overness to me was due to him being treated more as an afterthought than anything, but that's a topic for a different post altogether. My point is that no one seemed to care that he went back on his word, no one except his eternal detractor Michael Cole. That includes the WWE writers.

Of all the segments and matches I saw at the Farg Monday, the one that stood out most as surprising was that they seemed to plant the seeds of the OTHER guy in that title exchange down the path to villainy. In his interview with Josh Mathews, Big Show started to show the same kinds of doubt, wistfulness and anger over losing his title so quickly that Christian showed post-losing the same belt to Randy Orton earlier this year. He even covered for any misdeed Bryan may have committed by taking ostensible blame for planting the seed to cash in before his promised WrestleMania date. But the way everything played out, especially after Mathews pulled the dick move of goading Show's feelings of anger, it felt like the World's Strongest Athlete would become the World's Strongest Supervillain.

To me, that's a refreshing change of pace for a few reasons. One, it presents a good story for the good guy to cash in his briefcase without automatically turning heel. It's a way to dodge predictability, and anything to add variety to the programming is a good thing. Second, it makes way more sense for Show to turn bad out of all this. As a giant, it's easier for him to be hated because he can play the bully. It's rare that WWE pushes a guy like Bryan's stature as a bad guy anyway. I'm not sure it'd work for him, at least right now. I think WWE would need to recondition the crowd in order for a heel, ROH-style Bryan Danielson submission dickhead character to work. Right now, he's got the perfect oeuvre as the plucky yet skilled underdog. Besides, does anyone have faith in WWE creative to run a reverse David and Goliath story and have anyone come out looking good? Didn't think so.

Besides, with the rumors of Shaq coming in to wrestle Big Show at WrestleMania (as an aside, I fucking love that idea, and I think Shaq should train for a year to claim a full-time roster spot for a year or so), does it make any sense to have both of them go in as super faces? It might, but at the same time, I think it would be a lot better if Show was the villainous giant to counteract Shaq's affable goofiness. Wouldn't now be the perfect spot for him to start that build? Wouldn't Bryan be the perfect first opponent?

I think so.