WWE star Daniel Bryan recently did an interview with Digital Spy, and during the interview, Bryan had the following to say when asked why fans seem to support him more than guys like John Cena and Roman Reigns:

“Part of the secret is people love saying ‘Yes! Even if people don’t like me, they have fun throwing their fingers in the air saying ‘Yes!’ So that is part of the secret, but another thing about John Cena and Roman Reigns – not that they’ve had an easy road to the top in WWE, John Cena was nearly fired before he became WWE Champion for the first time – but they probably had a much easier path than I did.

[Cena and Reigns] are more of the prototypical WWE Superstars than I am. So when I came in I don’t think any of the top WWE people looked at me as, ‘Oh this is somebody who we look at as being a future main eventer for WrestleMania’ or even a future WWE Champion, or even a future Intercontinental Champion!

They looked at me like ‘Oh, this guy is good at what he does, he’s a good little wrestler, he can go out there and he can perform – he might get a little bit popular, but he’s never going to be The Guy’. Whereas somebody like Roman Reigns or John Cena – people look at them and they think, ‘Oh, this guy could be The Guy, let’s see what happens’, and that was never me.”

http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/s216/wwe/interviews/a623812/daniel-bryan-interview-roman-reigns-had-it-easier-than-me.html#~p3mnL6B2pKfEtR