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Daniel Bryan was introduced in front of the main roster audience in 2010 as a part of the first ever NXT competition. He was one of the few stars from the competition for whom WWE had big plans. In the 2011 Money in the Bank event, he won the SmackDown Money in the Bank ladder match.
Back then, WWE used to organise two separate ladder matches for each of their brands, which guaranteed Championship matches for the WWE Championship and the World Heavyweight Championship separately. SmackDown had the World Heavyweight Championship back then, and the SmackDown Money in the Bank Ladder match featured big stars like Sheamus and Kane.
Daniel Bryan remembers winning MITB in 2011
But Daniel Bryan came out victorious in this match, and it was the beginning of his main roster push he got less than a year after his introduction in front of the WWE main roster audience. Bryan recently remembered winning the Money in the Bank ladder match in 2011 and shared back stories about it while speaking with Chris Van Vliet on the Insight Podcast. He said;
“The thing that whole led to me Yes-ing was I had won the Money in the Bank, and the only reason I won the Money in the Bank is because they had two Money in the Banks. They had one for Raw and one for SmackDown. They knew for sure they wanted Alberto Del Rio to win the Raw one.
He won the SmackDown MITB match in 2011
"The SmackDown one, they thought they wanted Wade, Barrett, Cody Rhodes, or me on the day of the show; they all decided it was me because they didn’t want a bad guy to win the Money in the Bank on the SmackDown side, because they had a bad guy winning it on the Raw side.
"But the most important thing was the Alberto Del Rio thing. But then they gave me the Money in the Bank, and they’re like, oh no. Now, Daniel Bryan has the Money in the Bank, and nobody at that point had cashed in and lost. And so, you know, we did a couple things with it for a couple weeks, and then it was off TV for like six weeks, or whatever it is.
Daniel Bryan cashed in the contract on the Big Show to become the World Heavyweight Champion
"Then they inserted me in a story with Big Show and Mark Henry, which got me on TV or whatever it is. But it was great. It put me in a story, but then Mark Henry got hurt. This was at the TLC pay-per-view in 2011. Mark Henry gets hurt. I wasn’t scheduled to be at the pay-per-view. I had a Walmart signing that same day in Baltimore with Kelly Kelly, and came over to the building because Brie was there; I think Brie had a match on the show.”
Daniel Bryan successfully cashed in his Money in the Bank contract at the TLC event of the same year in December on The Big Show after he defeated Mark Henry in a Chairs match at the mentioned event. He managed to defeat The Big Show in only 7 seconds time period to win his first World Championship in WWE by cashing in his Money in the Bank contract.
