Bryan Danielson Knew WWE’s Booking for Royal Rumble 2015 Was a Bad Idea

The 2015 edition of WWE’s Royal Rumble pay-per-view includes one of the most infamous matches of the past decade, and people involved in the match seemed to have known that before it happened. The show was famously (or infamously depending on who you asked) WWE’s first major step towards pushing Roman Reigns to main event status, having him win the Royal Rumble thanks to an assist from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. But fans inside Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center loudly booed most of the match after Daniel Bryan, who was fresh off returning from injury, was unceremoniously eliminated from the match after a mere 10 minutes. 

This was still a time when fans passionately wanted to see Bryan as a main eventer in WWE, something they got a taste of with WrestleMania XXX but wouldn’t see again until after Bryan returned from his early retirement. The company even went out of its way to try and mitigate the backlash by having Reigns beat Bryan at Fastlane the following monthl, then had to salvage the WrestleMania 31 main event with a Money in the Bank cash-in from Seth Rollins. Bryan, now going by his real name Bryan Danielson in AEW, talked about that situation while on The Sessions during Starrcast V this past weekend. 

“I knew (it was a bad idea), and especially because I had just come back from neck surgery,” Danielson said. “When they told me what I was doing in the Rumble in 2015 and that I was only going to be in there for four or five minutes, I told them, ‘I think this is a bad idea. This isn’t necessarily great for Roman.’ They kind of ignored that. Then it wasn’t. Stuff happened. That was that. All of that to say, Roman has done such a great job and now he’s the biggest star in wrestling. He’s performed at such a high level for a long time and he’s done such a great job.”

Danielson and Reigns would wind up sharing the ring quite a few times before “The American Dragon” left WWE last year. That included a triple threat with Edge for the Universal Championship in the main event of WrestleMania 37 and a singles match weeks later where Bryan would have to leave SmackDown if he lost. He’d wind up debuting for AEW months later at the All Out pay-per-view. 

h/t Fightful