Thursday, July 25, 2019

Daniel Bryan and 205 Live

While it would result in great matches, there's no need for 205 Live to exist, let alone Bryan to go there
Photo Credit: WWE.com
So Daniel Bryan, the greatest professional wrestler in its history, has been teasing an announcement the last few weeks on Smackdown, one that keeps getting preempted for some reason. The rumors swirling around that announcement have portented an almost unthinkable scenario, however. Rumblings have given way to Bryan's transition from the main roster to 205 Live, the purgatory of WWE's main roster. If you're as shocked as I am, well, you're human. A little over five years ago, Bryan was the centerpiece of the most satisfying WrestleMania perhaps ever, and not even six months ago, he was one of the few heels on WWE's main roster to get heat not because he sucked, but because he was able to pull puppet strings and get people to jeer him just as easily as they cheered him both five years and one year ago.

Perhaps the logic behind the move is that Bryan can get people interested in any project he works on. Few times in his WWE tenure did he come out met with silence. Perhaps the only time in his career where no one reacted to him was the lull point in 2011 where he was booked flaccidly into his Money in the Bank win, and then after, booked in lazily as many briefcase holders do before he cashed it in in December. Read, he was only ineffective when creative assertively placed him in a position where no one could care about him. Now though, he's got Vince McMahon's ear, and he's one of the few wrestlers who probably has free reign, which makes me suspect the rumored move could be his idea.

Before WWE cleared him and when he was teasing leaving the company, he openly ruminated about some of the best wrestlers he could face off against, where he could flex his creative freedom with receptive opponents working a different style than what is expected on RAW and Smackdown. After re-signing, short of going to NXT, the only place on the roster where he could get a reasonable facsimile of that kind of tour would be going to 205 Live, a show that has a diverse mix of wrestlers with varied styles who work weekly with McMahon's focus less attuned to them. The 205 roster is stacked enough that if it broke away from WWE today, it could be a viable touring indie in any territory in this country or Canada. Chad Gable, Gran Metalik, Drew Gulak, Akira Tozawa, and Jack Gallagher among others make this show must-see even for people who poison themselves from too much main roster television in a given week. And Bryan would have tremendous matches with all of them.

Still, for whatever the arrangement is, and however Bryan would rehabilitate the Cruiserweight Championship, it shows how much weight classes in worked wrestling are, well, stupid. Bryan went to the top of the company weighing 200 pounds soaking wet. He was able to beat guys like Kane, Batista, and Big Show credibly because he's tremendous at wrestling. You know else is really good at wrestling? Just about anyone else at random on that 205 Live roster. Arguments against, say, Gulak being able to hang with, let alone beat, Brock Lesnar due to size discrepancies become null and void when you see Gulak twisting Lesnar's ever-reddening arms into configurations not thought possible. Pro wrestling has always been a theater where impossible becomes possible as the norm, which is why all the concern trolling over realism feels like an exercise in shrill gatekeeping.

If it's McMahon's will or even Bryan's will to be placed on 205 Live, there's not a thing anyone who still subscribes to WWE Network can do to stop it. It might even be appointment television/streaming, for all I know. The thing is though, the idea of limiting wrestling when its potential is limitless is a huge reason why WWE's structural rot is as pervasive as its moral rot. Hell, you could even say something similar about New Japan Pro Wrestling, given how well Shingo Takagi and, I guess, Will Ospreay are doing in the G1 Climax after they did the Best of the Super Juniors tournament. Obviously, coming for the New Japan Juniors will get a lot more people angry than going for 205 Live, but do you really need to have "small boi" titles when these guys can compete credibly against the bigger dudes? I mean, the reason why KUSHIDA is in NXT now is absolutely because of that false dichotomy. Maybe it's time to stop looking at a wrestler's weight to determine how well they get to be booked.