And some people say I shouldn’t be the face of this company.

I’d like to ask you to close your eyes and just imagine for a minute (not really, you should be reading this with your eyes open, but bear with me).

There are moments that you wish you could simply live in for the rest of your life. Obviously, there are big personal events; your weddings, your graduations, what have you. Additionally, these moments can be impersonal, be it seeing your favorite artist perform live, watching your favorite team win a title, things of that nature.

These moments, while rarer, are similarly present in the realm of professional wrestling.

Daniel Bryan won the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania 30. It is arguably the crowning achievement of his entire career, and the ultimate proof of him as an undeniable legend in the history of wrestling. The haters had been silenced, the supporters vindicated; this was a win for All of Us, all the people that live and breathe this beautiful art form. The fact that not just a, but the indie darling of the 2000s won the big one, on the grandest stage of them all, was and is a big deal that affected the modern wrestling landscape. 

Unfortunately, we all know it ended prematurely.

But I’m not really interested in touching on that. I could talk about that, or how his only PPV title defense was against fucking Kane in a gimmick match, but it simply isn’t something I feel is worth the energy. What I would like to do, however, is to ask you to walk with me as I try to do the impossible task of putting the lightning back in the bottle and recapturing the magic of the Yes Movement.

Imagine being a Daniel Bryan fan in January 2014 (I’m sure this is easy for many of you!). At the start of the year, he’s already become a member of the Wyatt Family, and you are…confused. 

You are confused because you simply can’t imagine why a professional wrestling company would possibly attempt to turn the hottest babyface not just in the company but in the world into a heel, and a heel under a faction leader at that. Are they stupid? I mean, you watch him aggressively kick in the head and chest of one of the Usos on Monday Night Raw, and you recognize that his work is great, even compelling, but it’s completely alien to you. It’s a completely impossible task to be asked to boo this man knowing just how great he is, both as a wrestler and as a babyface, with all the momentum he’s earned over the last year. You hear the fans in the crowds cheer for him regardless, and you understand them completely; hell, maybe you are one of them in the stands. 

And yet, you don’t look away. You don’t turn the channel or leave the arena, even though you know this stuff is, with all due respect, beneath Bryan.. You can’t stop watching because that’s how magnetic a personality Daniel Bryan is; even when miscast, he’s still the Best Wrestler in the World, and it’s impossible for your eyes and ears to deny that fact. 

And it’s a good thing you keep watching, too, because otherwise you’d miss the catalyst for what would turn this run into the stuff of legend.

After only a few weeks within the Wyatt family, Daniel Bryan turns his back on Bray Wyatt. He takes off the Wyatt clothing, kicks Bray all around the ring, he throws him into Harper and Rowan on the outside of the steel cage. He climbs up to the top of the cage, and you are just as enthralled as those in the audience as they all chant one word in unison: “Yes”.

At this point, it feels undeniable. Like, the people in charge in the back have to hear this, right? Surely they have to push him to the top after this? The moment feels like the start of something truly special, something that will turn Bryan into the canonized legend that WWE has been trying so hard to stop him from becoming.

And then Bray Wyatt beats him on PPV a few weeks later.

It doesn’t matter to you if it was a great match, maybe even the best of Bray’s career. The fact that these absolute morons couldn’t get out of their own way just once to do the right thing is unfathomable to you, only confounded by him not even being in the Royal Rumble match to end the show. No, instead they bring back fucking Batista of all people to WIN THE WHOLE THING ARE YOU KIDDING ME. Are you really telling us to get excited for a fucking Batista vs. Randy Orton main event in 2014? Absolute madness.

But still, you keep watching. Maybe it’s not even because you’re convinced they’ll right this ship. Maybe you just want to see what happens in the wake of CM Punk’s departure. So you sit through these long, droning, insufferable Triple H promos only made tolerable by the presence of Daniel Bryan giving some of the best promo work of his career up to this point. You seethe at the insinuations of Bryan as a “B+ player”, and you cheer when Bryan shoves it right back in The Authority’s faces. 

With these segments, and the matches he has on television where he’s practically killing himself just to make a point, you’re starting to notice something: the crowds are getting louder. They’ve always been loud for Bryan, mind you, but you can genuinely feel the momentum growing with every passing week. You’re not naive enough to get too caught up in the hype, though; this is WWE, what have they ever shown you to make you feel like Bryan will be any different? Shit, look at what they did to CM Punk after he got white hot in 2011, having him lose to a part-time Triple H for no godforsaken reason other than to bury him because he didn’t fit their vision of what a WWE superstar should be. It’s no wonder that the man walked out!

No, it’s not until the fans fill the ring that you really feel like Something may be Happening.

It’s here where the Yes Movement feels like a thing that even the most spiteful motherfuckers in the history of wrestling cannot deny. The visual of countless fans with t-shirts of this short, bearded man chanting “Yes!” in defiance to the dastardly Authority as the Bearded One in question just laughs like he knows that they can’t stop the inevitable is perhaps the most enduring image to come out of this entire storyline, and it’s one that fans in attendance, in that ring, and watching live will probably never forget. The sense that they genuinely hijacked the show to get Bryan his chance at Mania invoked feelings of the babyfaces of yesteryear, which is high praise considering the Ace of the promotion has been getting mixed reactions for the better part of a decade.

So, now it’s time for WrestleMania. Think of the fans behind Daniel Bryan in this moment; the 7-year-olds watching their very first WrestleMania; the 17-year-olds who’ve been really invested in Bryan and Punk as Their Guys over the past three years; the 27-year-olds who fell out of love with wrestling primarily due to the man Bryan’s facing in the opening bout, but have become invested again with this storyline. The last group may be the most skeptical here, as they remember The King of Kings’s burials of their favorites like Booker T and Rob Van Dam with his golden sledgehammer shovel. It wouldn’t be a shock to them if WWE said “fuck what the fans want, we’re giving you an Evolution nostalgia wank fest that nobody asked for and you will LIKE IT”.

And you watch the opener. You don’t care about the commentary putting Hunter over as more experienced than Bryan at the SHOWCASE OF THE IMMORTALS~!!, because you know how good your guy is. You aren’t even paying attention to the fact that this is Triple H’s best performance of his career, the only performance where he’s ever legitimately earned the “Cerebral Assassin” moniker, because you’re so locked in to the action. You bite on every nearfall. You roll your eyes at Stephanie’s incessant jeering. When Bryan grabs that bottom rope and shakes it to get the crowd to a fever pitch, you are with him completely in that moment. When the 1, 2, 3 hits it feels like a weight off of your chest. Who gives a shit about the post-match beatdown, Daniel Bryan is in the MAIN EVENT OF WRESTLEMANIA and just might pull this thing off.

Even with the deflating nature of Undertaker vs. Brock Lesnar (deflating for some in the sense of the Streak ending, deflating to others in the actual match that took place), you are brought right back up when Bryan makes his entrance. On the edge of your seat the entire way, not worried about match quality or anything of that nature. The only thing that matters to you is the result. You feel when Bryan gets off the stretcher and gets back into the match. You breathe sighs of relief at every kickout that signals he’s still in the game. You almost can’t believe it when he locks on the Yes Lock and submits Batista to become world champion. It’s a moment ingrained in your memory as a wrestling fan and, even a decade removed, still hits you as hard as it did in the moment.

The beauty of wrestling, to me, is the frustration of it all. It can be vexing as a fan of a particular performer to see them not get the opportunities that you think they deserve, but it makes it all the better when they do get that opportunity and recognition. To me, there’s no moment I’d rather live in again as a wrestling fan than watching the greatest wrestler of all time win the world title on the biggest show of the year, in the biggest company in the business. If I described your experience at any point throughout this piece, I’m sure you might feel the same way.