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Who was a bigger star at his peak?


yesdanielbryan

Who was a bigger star at his peak?  

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  1. 1. Who was a bigger star at his peak?



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Have a friend who literally just started watching WWE again this week for the first time since the Attitude Era, after I had been trying to get him to for quite a while. He’s a huge MMA fan and Ronda getting so much positive press after Mania made him finally cave.

 

Anyhow, when I had told him a few weeks before Mania how pumped I was that I was going to see Daniel Bryan’s comeback in person, he had no idea who he was. This past Tuesday, he texted me to say how pumped he was to see Jeff Hardy win the belt on Raw. Obviously anecdotal, but I think plenty of people did Yes! chants at various events without a hint of curiosity as to what they were derived from.

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I'd go with Bryan by a long distance. The reactions Bryan was getting from like spring/summer of 2013 to when he got hurt in 2014 top any sort of reaction Jeff Hardy ever got. It felt like during Bryan's chase that he was the most over baby face in the company and that he was right up there with Cena. Jeff Hardy's main event run in 08 felt more like he a guy in the mix who was more over than his push than an actual top guy. Just look at where Hardy is on the WM 25 card as opposed to where Bryan is on the WM 30 card.

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I'd go with Bryan by a long distance. The reactions Bryan was getting from like spring/summer of 2013 to when he got hurt in 2014 top any sort of reaction Jeff Hardy ever got. It felt like during Bryan's chase that he was the most over baby face in the company and that he was right up there with Cena. Jeff Hardy's main event run in 08 felt more like he a guy in the mix who was more over than his push than an actual top guy. Just look at where Hardy is on the WM 25 card as opposed to where Bryan is on the WM 30 card.

 

I wouldn't go by crowd reactions by who the bigger star was. With Bryan Im struggling to think of 10 decent matches he had, I mean I can think og the ones like the Mania triple threat, Cena, but other than that im stumped.

 

Now Hardy well I can think of the ladder match vs Taker, the triple threat at armageddeon, morrison, Jericho, punk, TLC Triple Threat Tag matches, HBK, RVD, Styles in TNA.

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I'd go with Bryan by a long distance. The reactions Bryan was getting from like spring/summer of 2013 to when he got hurt in 2014 top any sort of reaction Jeff Hardy ever got. It felt like during Bryan's chase that he was the most over baby face in the company and that he was right up there with Cena. Jeff Hardy's main event run in 08 felt more like he a guy in the mix who was more over than his push than an actual top guy. Just look at where Hardy is on the WM 25 card as opposed to where Bryan is on the WM 30 card.

 

I wouldn't go by crowd reactions by who the bigger star was. With Bryan Im struggling to think of 10 decent matches he had, I mean I can think og the ones like the Mania triple threat, Cena, but other than that im stumped.

 

Now Hardy well I can think of the ladder match vs Taker, the triple threat at armageddeon, morrison, Jericho, punk, TLC Triple Threat Tag matches, HBK, RVD, Styles in TNA.

 

 

I'm not really sure if this is a troll comment or not....

 

Here's an even simpler argument for Bryan - 18,000 people paid to see him win the title from Cena at Summerslam. 78,000 people paid to see him win the title again at Wrestlemania.

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On the subject of merch sales, I remember Bryans merch being uniformly terrible at the time with fake beards and bad shirt designs based around him having a beard. Compare that to 08-09 Hardy when it seemed like every kid in the arena had those day-glo arm bands on

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It's funny, when I first saw this thread I thought Daniel Bryan hands down. Then I realized that I really wasn't following WWE all that closely during the years Jeff Hardy had his World Title wins. From the sounds of this thread, he was a lot bigger than I ever realized...so I had to vote "I dunno."

 

Same thing here. The idea of Jeff Hardy being a legit big main event star still seems baffling to me. Not to mention I consider him to be mostly a terrible worker (and I have seen a few of his main event push matches back then). To be frank, I never got the Hardys at all, but at least Matt was solid. Jeff was all stunts and crappy (and sloppy to boot) late 90's indierriffic work. His first few stints in TNA were godawful too. Never got his gimmick either. He doesn't look "artistic" or "mysterious" to me. He looks like a geeky art-school reject who accidentaly dropped a bucket of toxic waste on his arms.

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Also worth taking into consideration Jeff's stardom in the early 2000s. The Hardy Boyz are probably the most popular tag team in the history of the company. I remember their huge female contingency, which got even bigger when they added Lita, and lots of fans dressed like them at live shows. For Jeff, the biggest examples are in merchandise sales, but Royal Rumble 2008 is probably his biggest PPV success. I want to say his house show numbers were strong too. I swear that in 2009, every kid at WWE shows was wearing a Rey mask, a Cena shirt, and the Jeff Hardy arm thing.

 

Bryan peaked higher in terms of fan outcry for him to be pushed to the top, and obviously Jeff Hardy never chased the title all the way to Wrestlemania or had a show built around him the way Bryan did. Both overcame lots of perception issues to become megastars.

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ie Bryan's merchandise sales in 2014.

 

this was a daily discussion here four years ago and I don't know if we ever got the right answer. Remember Dave reporting the company was very unhappy with Bryan's merch sales and that's why he wasn't being pushed stronger. But then there were reports he was only trailing Cena. Then some reports had him at like 5 or 6 behind guys you wouldn't expect.

 

then he got the Che Guevara merchandise replacing the goat stuff and I think he started selling again. It was really confusing

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I'd go with Bryan by a long distance. The reactions Bryan was getting from like spring/summer of 2013 to when he got hurt in 2014 top any sort of reaction Jeff Hardy ever got. It felt like during Bryan's chase that he was the most over baby face in the company and that he was right up there with Cena. Jeff Hardy's main event run in 08 felt more like he a guy in the mix who was more over than his push than an actual top guy. Just look at where Hardy is on the WM 25 card as opposed to where Bryan is on the WM 30 card.

 

I wouldn't go by crowd reactions by who the bigger star was. With Bryan Im struggling to think of 10 decent matches he had, I mean I can think og the ones like the Mania triple threat, Cena, but other than that im stumped.

 

Now Hardy well I can think of the ladder match vs Taker, the triple threat at armageddeon, morrison, Jericho, punk, TLC Triple Threat Tag matches, HBK, RVD, Styles in TNA.

 

 

I'm not really sure if this is a troll comment or not....

 

Here's an even simpler argument for Bryan - 18,000 people paid to see him win the title from Cena at Summerslam. 78,000 people paid to see him win the title again at Wrestlemania.

 

 

How many of those people specifically paid to see Bryan, though? Would Wrestlemania have drawn any less if Bryan was working with Sheamus in the midcard as was the original plan?

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It's always difficult to tell who draws for that as the name "Wrestlemania" seems to be the biggest draw for the show. Granted, you could probably credit Goldberg for at least some of Mania 33's success and the announcement of Shane-Taker supposedly moved the most tickets for Mania 32. Can't say for sure it would have been the same for Mania 30, though.

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This doesn't necessarily correlate into Mania ticket sales, but Bryan was pulling some monster quarter ratings for his segments in the build to Wrestlemania in 2014 and the post-Mania feud with Kane. He was certainly a draw for a significant part of the audience.

 

That being said I still voted Jeff. He was a relatively smaller star in wrestling, but at a time where wrestling was far more popular.

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