also absolutely criminal how he’s used atm
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I dunno, this year he’s been used as a safe pair of hands to excel younger talent
To be honest he also has some creative control so this is actually what he’s suggesting for himself, put himself on smackdown and just put over the young guys. I’d be like ummm no mate even if you’re just here for another year you’re our generations Bruno/Hogan and you’re getting the legacy feuds with edge or orton or whoever.
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Are we all in on them intentionally not clearing him for those 2+ years as to get him out the spotlight of Roman…whilst keeping him under contract so he couldn’t go to NJPW/ROH/CMLL?
Disagree to be honest. Feel like he’d be happy in his current role and due to previous injuries it’s probably unwise to feature him too heavy
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absolute top bloke. did a training session under him about 15 years ago and used to speak to him on MySpace around the same time. big belle and sebastian fan.
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You can be on top without wrestling every week tbf, look at the last entire ten years of brock, trips and undertaker
please can I get some links to his best matches and moments (in wrestlibs terms)?
passed me by because I have barely paid attention since the Attitude era, but he seems like somebody I should like?
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this one was fun
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To me this was the big face/heel pairing of the current generation and the fact they threw it away on a survivor series with basically zero build and bryan being a tweener was a great shame. They still made it great but it was the worst incarnation of what could’ve been.
Similar match 10 years prior. A violent brawl with big fight feel, great psychology and a super rowdy crowd. Detached retina early on adds to it.
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yeah that’s fair, could have been something really special if they’d have been able to do it when bryan was at his hottest before the injury.
brock has had a few great matches at survivor series (aj, finn) that basically got no build, all of them would have been better on literally any other ppv as part of a proper angle. this one is my favourite of them because of the tweener thing though, the start of the comeback is a big ol kick to the balls, great stuff
they’re both so good, hope they do it again sometime
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Think this is maybe the pinnacle of US ‘indie’ wrestling. A phenomenal and physical epic.
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Also he had 2 torn muscles in shoulder in this match, so he did 2 of the best US matches of the past 20 years injured.
Love the apparent story of him wanting to have the 2/3 falls match with Austin Aries in 2004 go just under 3 hours long! Madman! Think the idea was to have the 1st and 2nd falls be 1 hour draws and then a winner in the 3rd.
was a little busy once I finished this yesterday so gonna come up with a handpicked best of now…
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did CM Punk nick the GTS from thaf lad, then?
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yeah, and bryan got his flying knee finisher off him as well
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So, other than C.M Punk, Daniel Bryan is my favourite wrestler of the decade and it was because of those two I got back into wrestling in 2011/12. Amusingly, the first match I ever watched of D Bry was him getting jobbed out in 18 seconds by Sheamus at Wrestlemania 28, which I tuned into largely for HHH vs Taker Hell in a Cell, and I was like “who the fuck is this jobber?!” but that turned out to be quite a key turning point in Bryan’s career, and actually in the long run, maybe helped his career? As it’s from that moment that he begins his 2-year path to the top at Mania XXX
For instance, literally, a month later they had the match they intended to have had it not been cut for time (they were actually given a 2-out-of-3 as an apology) and for a kind of limited guy like Sheamus they put on a barn-stormer
then there’s his inevitable feud with C.M Punk, which, while had a load of unnecessary bollix added in with Kane and Punk’s future wife/Bryan’s former on-screen partner/manager A.J Lee, still managed to have a fantastic trilogy, though the original match before all the stupid gimmicks is the best:
Then There’s Team Hell No, which while didn’t provide many classic matches, it did give us an extremely entertaining odd couple gimmick. Oh and then there’s their fantastic match with The Shield for their debut in the WWE (just ignore Ryback)
After eventually losing the tag titles to The Shield, we begin Bryan’s run to the top in earnest, even if he was only meant to be a holdover challenger (which is hilarious to think they gave him this amount of attention and big matches with Cena and Orton and yet didn’t intend to actually put the belt on him at any point - unless of course, this was the feeling out process). Either way, he revitalised Cena’s career and reputation, after Punk’s feud with him started it at least, with this match (even if it took a year or so).
When it seemed Bryan was out of the title picture, and faced with YET ANOTHER CENA/ORTON feud the (admittedly “hometown” Seattle fans) hijacked their big RAW go-home segment to show they weren’t giving up on Bryan just yet
This of course leads to the hilarious Royal Rumble 2014 (& 15) where fans actually turned on Batista, then The Rock, because Bryan wasn’t getting the push he deserved, covered pretty brilliantly by this Botchamania video
And so, the powers that be realised, maybe they need to get Bryan away from The Wyatt Family bollix (even though he’s one of the few guys who actually got great matches out of Bray) and give him another chance at Elimination Chamber where they very quickly realised he had to be entered into the title picture for Wrestlemania or people were actually actively not going to watch Batista vs Orton for the millionth time
The stage was set then, the momentum was there, the fans were onboard, and WWE concede maybe the “B+ Player” was their guy:
His matches at Wrestlemania are probably the most gripping WWE has been… ever? Other than Punk vs Cena at Money in the Bank 2011? They speak for themselves, but the fact Bryan got maybe Triple H’s best match ever when he was semi-retired is… quite something
The main event is more about the climax than the match itself but it still has the entire Superdome, who just witnesed The Undertaker lose his undefeated streak, no less, on absolute tenderhooks
Sadly, this would be the peak of Bryan’s career, but at least he had that moment, announcing his apparent retirement two years later after constant health problems (the ladder match at WM31 notwithstanding), there wasn’t a dry eye in the house when it was confirmed:
but then, he fought his way back, and even if his return has been ok at best, he did amazing work as the heel enviromentalist champion, making a vegan hemp version of the WWE belt, and letting his story go full circle by passing on the torch to Kofi Kingston, making him the first African-American WWE Champion, bar The Rock’s mixed heritage, in an absolutely incredible role-reversing match
as I said before, if this guy isn’t a 5, I don’t know who is. Hope this helps!
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couple of extra bits, here’s his debut on the inaugural episode of NXT where he takes on then-champion Chris Jericho in a full little debut that tells quite a bit of story. The whole episode is on Youtube which I watched the over night and it’s fun to see Bryan clearly freaking out that he’s on this massive stage:
and an underrated banger from his first year in the company with a still, at that point, aspirational Dolph Ziggler:
he didn’t do a lot in 2011 other than his very good Money in the Bank win, and here’s the moment he cashed it in that shows he has the promise from the fans even that early on:
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KENTA’s still around too and one of the top bad guys in Japan, he’s a real underrated performer.
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