By Sean Radican, Torch columnist

Daniel Bryan has had a lot of time to breathe life into his heel character on Raw during the past several weeks. One of the greatest things about Bryan’s character is that it resonates with the fans. He is someone they truly want to boo. When Bryan was shown backstage with the psychologist on Raw 100, he was irritable and cranky. A nice layer to his character is that it was revealed the people in white with Bryan before he got married were there to take A.J. to a mental institute. A.J. may be crazy, but Bryan has shown he’s not a nice guy.

Bryan became an internet darling thanks in part to his past success in ROH. His “Yes, yes, yes” chants can be heard on nearly every independent release these days. Bryan also had the fans chanting that very same catch phrase along with him during his matches and promos, so what did he do? He flipped that heat onto himself by countering those yes chants by saying “No, no, no” and changing his t-shirt to also read “No, no, no.”

Since losing to Sheamus at WrestleMania this year, Bryan’s character has grown by leaps and bounds. His exchange with A.J. on Raw was hilarious when they did dueling yes’s and no’s after she told Bryan he would be facing Kane at SummerSlam. It seemed that perhaps Bryan had a SummerSlam match against Charlie Sheen set up on Raw 1000, but having a one-on-one contest with Kane isn’t a bad consolation prize.

The main event of Raw last night was fascinating to watch. Bryan was placed into a match with Cena. The match was announced at the beginning of the show, but there was no real hype behind the match. One of the things WWE didn’t do well is develop hooks for upcoming editions of Raw after Raw 1000 and that trend continued this week. WWE had already given away Big Show-Orton and Punk-Mysterio previously on the show with no build.

I wasn’t anticipating much out of the Bryan-Cena match given some of the odd finishes in other matches on the show. I thought it would be just a throwaway match, but what I watched unfold was fascinating. The majority of the time when Cena faces an opponent be it heel or face, he wrestles to a long “Let’s go Cena, Cena sucks” dueling chant. It has become the standard thing for fans to do during his matches because his character doesn’t connect with a segment of the Raw live audience. Another issue is that Cena rarely wrestles against an opponent where the fans feel he is in jeopardy; therefore we are left with the chants and mixed crowd reaction for Cena.

Last night started off the same, but then something happened. People cared about Bryan’s character, which week by week is getting more of a negative reaction. Cena started off on offense and the dueling chants started up, but then Bryan was able to make them invest in the match and root against him because of his ability to manipulate the emotions of the crowd.

For the most part, the dueling chants went away and the fans began chanting “yes” at Bryan while he was on offense. The match, which was very good, played out in front of a hot crowd that invested in jeering Bryan for the majority of the match. I hadn’t seen a wrestler manipulate the emotions of a crowd like that since Brock Lesnar gave Cena such a beating that even the hostile Chicago crowd turned around and began rooting for Cena down the stretch.

WWE has something special in Bryan if this current trend continues. Bryan has showed a unique ability to not only have good matches, but he can also manipulate the emotions of the crowd. Many wrestlers on the WWE roster have trouble getting heel heat from the crowd, but Bryan has shown he can take things about him that fans like and use them to increase his heel heat.

Bryan doesn’t have a big program heading into SummerSlam, but he is starting to show that he is capable of handling a top heel spot on Raw in the near future. Last night was the perfect way to use Bryan. He’s going into a program with Kane, but he had a fantastic TV match with Cena with a fantastic atmosphere. It wouldn’t be a shock to see Bryan as a top heel in WWE for a long time and he just may be the answer WWE has been looking for when it comes to countering the mixed reaction Cena gets as a face.

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