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But again that's not really my point. My point is that this "softly, softly" approach would do more harm than good to Bryan, and honestly it's nothing more than an excuse not to push him to the main event. Because he's not injury-prone, and others have come back from a broken neck and excelled. It's nothing to do with his injury, and it's everything to do with the fact that the WWE doesn't want him to be the guy.
I disagree. I thought it would be obvious that there'd be some built-in trepidation at throwing a guy right into a main event schedule, and building the WM storyline and the company around him, coming right back from a broken neck. Hell, half the reason why (for example) someone like Dolph Ziggler has been "held back" over these past couple of years is that every time they seriously pushed him before that, he got injured. It's nobody's "fault", but they've already had the aftermath of one of the great storyline blow-offs and nine months of potential programming ruined and thrown out the window by Bryan's injury. Do they really want to have that happen again? And yes, with a neck injury, there's every chance he can have complications when coming back (and he did for a long time there). It's totally understandable IMO that they'd just want to see him get back and be healthy for a bit before throwing all that workload and pressure onto him again. It doesn't matter what other injuries he's had, or how "tough" he's perceived to be. A broken neck is as serious as it gets in sport and physical activity, and both Bryan himself and WWE have wider, longer-term considerations than immediate storylines and the wrestling business to think of.