Daniel Bryan Beats John Cena, But an Era Refuses to End

When Cody Rhodes won the WWE Championship at WrestleMania this year, a curious thing happened online where fans claimed that nobody had ever done anything like what Cody had achieved before, “finishing his story” despite the seeming antagonism of WWE and the last minute, unwelcome interjection of a movie star who was once a former WWE star. This struck me as odd — I was there at WrestleMania XXX, and I got booed because I wanted to see Batista win; some of the beats were different, but the songs were basically the same, right?

“Nuh-uh,” I was told. “Daniel Bryan was a world champion before WrestleMania XXX. He beat John Cena at SummerSlam. He finished his story.”

The nail in the coffin of the notion of “finishing the story” in wrestling has well and truly been pounded, but in rewatching John Cena vs. Daniel Bryan for the first time since 2023, I found my mind wandering back to these two moments in time. In the history of professional wrestling there are many stories not unlike the one Jesus told about the stones that were rejected before becoming the cornerstones of some great building, and in a couple of them, the wrestlers who become those cornerstones win the World Championship before the moment when they cross into legend. Some of those title wins look like Bret Hart beating Ric Flair at a house show in Saskatoon for the sake of Coliseum Home Video, and some of them look like Daniel Bryan beating John Cena in the main event of SummerSlam. In both instances we end up with a champion we didn’t ask for much less consider as a possibility (Hulk Hogan, Randy Orton), but fate conspires to put the championship back on their shoulder at an anniversary WrestleMania, promising a company-wide renewal that, if you’re lucky, ends up like 25% fulfilled. Slot a rubber chicken in for a title win, and I think you can fudge the line between these events convincingly enough. 

Hello! Here’s a bit of EXTRA BIG EGG from Cena Month, as voted on by you, BIG EGG’s subscribers! There’s still an essay about Cena vs. Umaga to come to clear out that month, and a fair number of extra essays in the archive along with the BIG EGG MASTERLIST conversations between Joseph and myself, so sign up or use your free trial to access all of that. Catch y’all over the paywall.