5 reasons why WWE turned Daniel Bryan heel

#3 To Remove the Lesnar/Styles Problem

Lesnar and Styles battling at Survivor Series 2017

Going in to Survivor Series, one of the matches that fans were most looking forward to was seeing AJ Styles battling Brock Lesnar once again. The bout that the pair had at the 2017 edition of the annual November PPV was, no pun intended, phenomenal, and it is arguably the very best match that Brock Lesnar has had since returning to the WWE in 2012.

At that event, AJ was ultimately on the losing side despite putting in a gutsy underdog performance that brought the best out of Lesnar. With a rematch on the cards, that threw up a major headache for the WWE: does Brock beat Styles again, or do you beat the Beast in his first match since becoming Universal Champion again?

By taking the Phenomenal One out of that equation – as in having him drop the WWE Championship to Daniel Bryan – that removes that particular problem. No longer does Styles face the prospect of losing face by another defeat to Lesnar, and no longer does Brock have the prospect of having his stock damaged by losing to AJ.

Given the nature in which Bryan won the WWE Championship on SmackDown, it appears that this is only the start of what should hopefully be a heated, lengthy rivalry between D-Bry and Styles.

As such, the pissed off AJ seems primed and ready to interfere in the Bryan and Lesnar bout, be that either causing a DQ finish or by outright screwing over Daniel. Either way, this change-up of the SmackDown landscape takes a little bit of the pressure off WWE creative for Survivor Series.