Quoted By:
2013 is undeniably a great year for WWE. It’s the best that the biggest wrestling company of all time has had since that vaunted banner year of 2000. In 2013, the WWE had their best all around year of television in over a decade. Typically, you had one brand or the other being great at one point in time, so there was always this counterweight. With the brand split basically being over and Smackdown hardly even mattering in any sort of real canon, that was less of a problem than ever. In 2013, one of the great rivalries in company history wrapped up in February, and another one unfolded throughout most of the spring, early summer, and again in the fall. So much of this comes down to Daniel Bryan against The Shield and the major matches that guys like CM Punk and John Cena had, but in general, everything just seemed to work better. Not as well as possible, but better than possible. Randy Orton became the best version of himself, the guy that I think a lot of people pretended he was in 2020. The tag team division was at its best and most prolific state in, again, thirteen years or so. Beyond all of that, they stumbled upon a piece of genuine actual magic out in the world, first with the perfect build up of Bryan through the spring and summer as a surprising-but-sensible Cena heir, pulling the trigger, and then being loudly and resoundingly fought against when trying to go back on it. It’s one of the most fascinating and thrilling things to ever happen in wrestling. It’s the best in-ring year they’ve had in a long time or will have for a longer time, and has the first half of what is, to me, the best feud or storyline that they’ve ever done. Hard to deny.
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