>>16143070>>16143112>>16143251If you have charisma, people don't laugh at you when they see your picture on a billboard. Bryan actively drove people away from the show. He's cringe as fuck, and only cringy people like him.
Compare him to people with actual charisma. Mick Foley obviously wasn't a cool pretty boy like Flair or Michaels or a ripped badass like Austin or Hogan, but he knew how to package what he had. He could be a movie monster or a teddy bear. He could be a savage or a poor misunderstood lovable freak who's still crazy enough that you wouldn't want to cross him. THAT is main event-level charisma.
I don't believe that Chris Benoit should ever have moved past the level of "guy who the main event guy wrestles when he's not in the main event", but I'd even put his charisma above Bryan's. He looks scary, and that's something. I'm using this to point out just how lacking Bryan is in the charisma department. Maybe Bryan could have been a host for some reality TV show, but as a wrestler? Negative charisma as far as non-smarks are concerned.
Honestly, the smarks probably helped sabotage his career by convincing him that he was the Austin of his generation. He was literally being called that for a while.
