#3 – Daniel Bryan
Daniel Bryan is the most popular pro wrestler in the world…right now. He's been popular ever since giving the fans something to chant, but now it's gone beyond just a popular catchphrase. People want Bryan. They're prepared to start a revolution (or at least talk about one on the internet) if they don't get him. At the Royal Rumble, an entire arena showed WWE management what they thought of a WrestleMania without Bryan in the main event. A couple months ago, Seattle showed Triple H, Stephanie McMahon and about a dozen legends what they thought of another Randy Orton-John Cena rivalry.
That being said, the dream won't last forever. It's very unlikely WWE will give Bryan the title and let him run with it for a year. It's very unlikely that he'll reach the levels of Cena, Rock and Austin. But he's only 32-years-old, a former world champion, and he's more popular than anybody's been in a while. That's pretty hard to ignore.
But we're not here to talk about last year, or even this year. This is a list of guys who will influence the FUTURE of the WWE roster. I believe Bryan will be a part of that future. I think he's in it for the long haul. CM Punk was never going to be a "lifer". He said that years ago. Bryan might be. He could probably retire now and be financially set for the rest of his life, happily married to a beautiful woman and live a full and quiet life in Washington. But I've been a Daniel(son) fan for a long time, and he's always come off as one of those guys who doesn't care for politics, doesn't care about being a "Superstar" – he's a pro wrestler, he's always been, and probably always be a pro wrestler.
Obviously this is pure speculation, but I'm not convinced he's as unhappy with the product as CM Punk, and I don't see those same issues coming into play. Bryan took a lot more torture from WWE management – he never won a match in NXT, they fired him after his first week on Raw, and they crushed him at WrestleMania in 18 seconds. If anybody had the right to tell Vince "I'm going home" it's Daniel Bryan. This isn't meant to bury anybody, and heaven knows I'm a Punk-supporter. It's meant to support my point, which is that Daniel Bryan will likely play a huge role in the next/new generation of WWE Superstars.
