What's the story?
Daniel Bryan made his return to WWE this week to challenge Kofi Kingston for the WWE title on Raw, and while Bryan was unsuccessful in his bid to become champion again, he and Rowan did end up winning the tag team titles later that week. In fact, they beat the former multiple time champions, The Usos to do so.
If nothing else, it was a huge win for Rowan and Bryan and also created an interesting new team for The Smackdown Live tag team division. With that being said, however, WWE seemed to have other reasons for making Bryan champion and it apparently had little to do with reshaping the tag team division.
In case you didn't know...
Daniel Bryan won the WWE title from AJ Styles late last year and had been on a tear on Smackdown Live ever since. Not only did he defeat five other men in an Elimination Chamber match, but he also beat Ali and Kevin Owens in a triple threat match as well. If nothing else, WWE made Bryan unbeatable and it showed through their booking.
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Unfortunately for Bryan, Kofi Mania hit The WWE Universe like a Hurricane and The New Day member finally got his long-awaited one-on-one title match with Bryan. Kingston would then go on to defeat Bryan at WrestleMania 35 to win The WWE title for the first time in his career but injured Bryan sometime in the process.
The heart of the matter.
Brad Shepard of The "Oh you didn't know" podcast spoke about Bryan and Rowan becoming champions this week and had a very interesting answer for why WWE ultimately decided to do this. In fact, it seemed to be solely for Daniel Bryan and not for the struggling tag team division at all.
"It allows him to work those matches and get less physical and obviously that’s healthy for him right now," Shepard explained during the show.
This reason that makes a lot of sense is Bryan's month-long absence is apparently due to him suffering an injury. Having Rowan do all the hard work during tag matches will give Bryan a chance to recover.
Of course the move makes sense, especially since it limits Bryan's in-ring time and allows him time to recover from his previous injury, but it seems more like a stop gap more than anything else. Beyond that, depending on how long WWE is willing to go on with Rowan and Bryan as champion, it could start to have implications on the overall title picture.
What's next?
At the time of writing this, there has been no match scheduled for Daniel Bryan and Rowan, but one can probably guess that they will battle with The Usos for the titles at Money In The Bank. WWE could even end up making a triple threat or fatal four-way match involving other teams which could help the division big time.
In the end, WWE might keep Bryan in this spot for a while, especially since that allows him to take on a lighter load, recover from injuries, and continue to use his star power to boost others. But hopefully, he will also return to singles competition soon.