Daniel Bryan vs The Miz (8/17/2018)



This was in some ways a tale of two matches. On one hand this showed signs of being a genuine all time great WWE match but on the other it was the biggest example of why I just never get into anything the company does on any level anymore.

I don't want to get on a giant Miz tangent because that will just make this too long but this might have been my favorite actual in ring performance I've ever seen from him. He has his holes but they figured out how to duck around them perfectly. Him doing all callbacks to all of Bryan's great career rivals was some great shit and I thought them repeatedly going to Miz trying to do his own offense buy it never being good enough was a rare level of subtlety this company never really does. At least on the surface it looked like they were going to have something really special here.

But as it went on they just kind of didn't. The crowd didn't feel nearly as hot as you would have expected and the stuff that happened later just stopped feeling as special. Then the nonsense finish happened. I know this is just how they do things and every first match had to be a set up for the next one but if there was ever going to be a match not to do it on and just commit to having a "great match" this was it. No matter how many times they run this again I doubt it will ever be ~bad, but I don't think that they will ever really capture the magic of what they looked like they might have either.

This was their pitch to hit and they didn't strike out by any means, but they didn't hit it out of the park either.

***3/4


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