WrestleMania 30: The Undertaker loses to Brock Lesnar, but Daniel Bryan is champion

Did you think Triple H was going to make a regular, pedestrian entrance at Wrestlemania XXX? You would be wrong. We were treated to something so incomprehensibly stupid and amazing that our jaws are still dropped.

It was one part 1980’s metal music video, one part Game of Thrones and two parts Eyes Wide Shut. The result was a weird king-like masquerade party. It was probably Stephanie’s idea.

The WWE has been building towards Daniel Bryan’s upcoming Wrestlemania moment since he was brought into the company five years ago. Now hold on, I’m not suggesting that they drew this all up match-by-match and angle-by-angle all the way back in 2009 when he was first hired from the indie scene -- that’s giving everyone involved more credit than any show, wrestling or otherwise, likely deserves. The point is that everything the WWE has done to Bryan, and everything Bryan has done for the WWE, has led us to this point. Bryan could theoretically defeat his current nemesis and the most powerful man in the industry, Triple H, as well as take home the WWE World Heavyweight Championship that has eluded him for the better part of a year. And he’d do it all during WWE’s premier event, in its momentous 30th occurrence.

There’s a pretty good chance you didn’t watch all of the last five years of WWE programming that brought us to this point, and since it’s the moment that could make or break the momentum Bryan has managed to build in that time, it’s worth knowing what got us here. Specifically, that the message has almost always been the same, a message Bryan has beaten back time and again and is now mere days away from possibly shedding for good. If you’re considering chanting, “YES!” along with the rest at that time, it’s best you know why you’re doing it.