inb4BryanpinsSheamusin17secondsorless.
But seriously, there's no defense of this. Bryan is the most over man in the company, he should be in a much more high-profile match than against someone like Sheamus. He's already defeated people higher on the totem pole like John Cena, Randy Orton, The Shield, etc., so what is there to gain from defeating Sheamus? To avenge an 18 second loss from two years ago? He already proved that was a fluke the following month at Extreme Rules 2012 when he took Sheamus to his limit in a 2-out-of-3 falls match and even scored the first fall cleanly (meaning if it were a normal match with only one fall, he would have won.) He also beat Sheamus cleanly last summer on Raw. He has nothing left to prove here and it's just a waste of Bryan to try and use him to get a heel Sheamus over on the big stage.
All that said, I don't buy that they would do this. I wouldn't even discount the possibility of WWE releasing these sort of rumors on purpose in order to work people. There were talks of Shawn Michaels coming back just recently to fight Bryan or Bryan contesting for the streak. To consider Bryan for those type of big matches and then consider shooting him down in a midcard match worthy of opening up the show is a pretty big drop off.