WWE: Daniel Bryan Isn’t a Heel, He Just Found His Killer Instinct

It has been an interesting week in the wondrous world of professional wrestling, and especially in the on-screen life of Daniel Bryan. Last Tuesday, we saw the leader of the YES Movement end AJ Styles’s 371-day reign as WWE Champion by what many would deem to be nefarious means.

Daniel Bryan won the WWE Championship via a low blow and, with a curious grin on his face, continued to stomp away at Styles after the match. Obviously, this was WWE’s way of signaling that Bryan turned heel, right?

It’s not quite that simple.

Not after the match he had last night in the main event of Survivor Series against Brock Lesnar.

Anyone who watched Daniel Bryan vs. Brock Lesnar that night would know that Bryan unquestionably played a sympathetic role in their match, even though we’re technically not supposed to sympathize with heels.

Lesnar ragdolled The Yes Man senselessly without regard to his neck issues and a hushed crowd took note of it; they gave sympathy to a presumably heel Bryan and roared in cheers when it appeared he could pull an upset.

Maybe it’s just as simple as WWE needing Bryan to play the de facto face of the night, but nothing is ever simple in WWE.

It got even more complicated when he low blowed Lesnar. Only heels are supposed to low blow people, right?

Now, fans may be trying to figure out whether Bryan is supposed to be a heel or a face.

Maybe he’s neither. Maybe he’s just a complex character.

via WWE.com

Let’s look at Daniel Bryan’s “heel turn” from a character building standpoint. Blood had been boiling between Bryan and Styles for the last couple months now, but they always retained a certain level of respect among each other. Even after Bryan was frustrated to lose a WWE Championship match to Styles on the Oct. 30 episode of SmackDown, he kept a level-head.

But one can only be level-headed for so long.

Tensions between Styles and Bryan crescendoed to their peak last week when Styles said Bryan’s name against his wishes and bragged about tapping him out. Logically, Bryan’s character got frustrated, and when most people get frustrated and angry, they do something out of character.

Also keep in mind that this match came off the heels of Bryan losing to The Miz at SummerSlam, losing again to Miz and Maryse at Hell in a Cell, and losing to Styles on an episode of SmackDown.

In all of these encounters, Bryan was the honorable Yes Man who abided by the rules. Meanwhile, in his feud with The Miz, the A-Lister constantly highlighted that Bryan kept losing to him because Bryan lacked killer instinct; because he refused to cheat.

If only out of frustration for Styles and frustration for failing to win a string of big matches, Bryan had a drastic character change. Bryan got tired of following the rules and tired of getting screwed for it. A man would be crazy to do the same thing over and over again only to expect different results.

So he tried something different: a low blow. To his delight and surprise, this newfound killer instinct got him the WWE Championship. Last night, it nearly helped him defeat Brock Lesnar.

via WWE.com

This supposed heel turn was nothing more than the next logical step of character progression for Daniel Bryan.

A strong argument can be made that there are no heels and no faces in WWE anymore, only complex characters with complicated motivations. Sometimes, their actions lean in a way that the fans like, and other times, they don’t. This can be applied to Bryan in the same way that it can be applied to Becky Lynch.

See, Becky too had herself a “heel turn,” but really, her character just went in a direction that made sense for her to go in at a certain point in storyline. At SummerSlam, when Lynch watched her best friend essentially book herself into a SmackDown Women’s Championship match weeks before the show and – in Lynch’s eyes – steal both her thunder and her title, it made sense for Lynch to attack Charlotte Flair after the match.

Even this past Tuesday, for Lynch to choose Charlotte Flair as her replacement against Ronda Rousey and then embrace her for a hug, it made sense to do if only out of mutual respect for an in-ring equal she went to war with. It doesn’t mean Lynch turned face last week. She just made a decision that made sense for her character to make in that moment.

If we didn’t have words like “babyface” and “heel” in our vernacular, we wouldn’t look so deep into who’s a bad guy and who’s a good guy. We should really just look at WWE Superstars as complex character in the same way we would any other tv show. That’s exactly what they are: complex characters who constantly change and evolve over time.

If Bryan felt like a babyface last night, it’s because he still is. If he felt like a heel, it’s because he still is. To paraphrase the theme song of a certain NXT Superstar, no one is ever truly good and no one is ever truly evil. If we take the words “heel” and “babyface” out of the equation, we’re forced to just take and try to understand characters for who they are at face value.

At face value, Daniel Bryan is the same GOAT who we all know and love. The only difference now is that he has a new edge to him.