Daniel Bryan

[WingedEagle]

While I don't put much stock in being the best of the 2000s for these purposes, I think Bryan's body of work -- both the high-end standouts as well as the depth / consistency -- is more than enough to include him in the discussion with the bests of any era. Looking back at much of his career is a project I hope to get to this fall/winter with an aim towards figuring out exactly where he slots in. As noted above, he's in my top 5-10 now but I'd like to confirm that to be the case and figure out just where in that mix he falls.

[Cap]

I think comparing Danielson to some of the greats from other eras shows why he is a stand out performer in today’s wrestling and why he deserves to be in that conversation, mostly because I think his body of work holds up and his best qualities as a wrestler are qualities he shares with other greats. I have actually been going through Danielson matches/feuds at the same time I sort of work through Ric Flair matches/feuds and I see a lot of similarities in what makes them stand-out performers, so it’s a comparison that has been rattling around in my brain a bit.

 

The first thing I notice is how they create diversity in their matches in much the same way. Take the Danielson/Morishima feud from 2007, tailing off in 2008, for example. Danielson tells a developing story by working 3-4 different styles of matches in that feud, starting with a strategist trying to outsmart the big man to a revenge seeking underdog to a psychopath snapping to a badass small man proving his point. As much as I love Mori during his ROH run, he was more or less the same guy every time out. Danielson really made each of those matches feel different as you move through them and I would say brought out the most character out of Mori at the same time. It reminds me a lot of what Flair and steamboat did in their televised trilogy in 89. I actually rewatched them all yesterday on the heels of listening to part three of Parv’s Flair series. I kept wanting to rate one of them ****3/4 stars as a way of making the other two stand out (for myself), but every time I tried to justify it I was drawn to how unique each match was, but unique in the details. I particularly think about how Flair’s orientations to the match changed each time out and how that was made legible to the fans through how he played off Steamboat. Many of the spots where the same (as was the case with Danielson/Mori), but the psychology, the placement, the details were all different in such a way that they created very different matches that were enjoyable in their own right.

 

I think the other thing that makes Danielson stand out is how nuanced his work is. This stands out so much in the modern WWE (and even a lot of NJPW) when most people are moving from move to move and developing their character through their spots, their outfit, and their promos. Danielson has always relied – moreso than anyone I can think of off the top of my head – on his facial expressions, his interactions with the audience, his pace, and his body language to build his persona and tell the story he wants to tell. So much of today’s US wrestling is producing great matches that have a lot of rewatch value, but they don’t hold together with the characters and the broader narratives they should be a part of and they often lack much subtly. I think subtlety is something you see guys like Flair, Funk, and Hansen do particularly well. I think about how well those three, particularly Hansen in my mind, reacted to every little thing their opponent did and every little thing the audience did. Hansen was an ass kicker, but he actually showed lots of vulnerability when you watch him very close. I take his feud with Colon for example where he looked increasingly vulnerable the more time he spends one on one with Colon and the more Colon survives his offense. That is how I see Danielson wrestling and that sort of attention to the nuances between moves his ability to attend to layered stories provides him with a consistency and makes him a more compelling story than most of his peers. Take for example how Danielson is always trying to fire himself up for come backs when he is getting beat on by Mori or even Kenta. Even when they don’t work they make his runs of offense matter more. Or in the Unified match with Nigel he really makes Nigel the center of attention by always responding to Nigel. You see a confident champion who is a little scared he met his match, but who ultimately wins because he is too scared to lose. Those are things that tell the story of Danielson and do 10 other things simultaneously. I feel like so much of my disinterest in the modern WWE product is the result of a lack of layered coherent storytelling (not news), but Danielson (and some others) were and are able to put that back in the match despite the structures they are given.

 

Finally, the last thing that I think really makes him stand out is how many drastically different contexts he has been successful in. Not just different promotions, Danielson has wrestled and been very successful in at least three fairly different genres or approaches to wrestling (U.S. Indy, Japan, WWE). And you could maybe even divide that up or tack on more depending on how you see his work in japan and what you think of as “success”. His diversity of success is pretty tops as far as his contemporaries go and almost harkens back to territory days. A lot of the Americans that I see people talking about as real contenders for their number one spot or their top 5, they mostly had diverse successes and produce top quality stuff in a varying context. That diversity is something that is always praised but has been to some extent systemically removed from much of the wrestling world.

 

The real difference I see between Danielson and Flair, Lawler, Bockwinkle, Hart, Jumbo, Misawa and even Funk to a degree is that he didn’t spend as much time carrying a brand and when he did it was in a way that makes it very difficult to compare to others. Personally, I love his ROH title run and don’t know if there was a time the belt felt stronger or more important, but it is the ROH title in a highly stratified era of American Pro Wrestling that is mediated and distributed very differently. Like, how do you compare Danielson’s run on top of the ROH and his absolutely electric run to the title in the WWE vs Flair in the NWA, Bockwinkle in AWA, Misawa in All Japan (a whole other can of worms really), or Laweler in Memphis? I think that sort of top guy argument gets fuzzy around a guy like Danielson and ultimately leads into too many “what ifs” that I don’t know are productive. Ultimately, it turns into a bit of a shadow for me, but I am not sure that is actually justified.

 

If I were to make a list, I am pretty confident that Danielson would be in my top 3 right now and would remain in my top 5-10 as I fixed many of my blind spots. He would be a real contender for #1, for sure and it is because I think the qualities that make him stand out are qualities he shares with other greats.

[dawho5]

So you don't feel like you are qualified to vote and you just wrote that? Great write-up on Danielson and possibly the best argument I could see for him being high in the end results. You ought to think about voting.

[Cap]

So you don't feel like you are qualified to vote and you just wrote that? Great write-up on Danielson and possibly the best argument I could see for him being high in the end results. You ought to think about voting.

I actually decided the other day that I probably will. This is a little misleading though. Danielson has been more or less my favorite wrestler since I got back into wrestling in about 2004 so I have watched a disperprotionate amount of American Dragon matches. All the same, thanks.

[soup23]

Bryan vs. Daniels from Night of Tribute is a really strong match. They present it as Bryan now being the champ and the guy on top and being able to dominate Daniels. Daniels has to resort back to his cagey vet ways to regain control and take over in the match. The parallel is presented nicely and Bryan has his heel stuff pretty much worked out here and it seems fresh and organic. Daniels cheating to take advantage as a babyface in the match was wonderful. I just thought this was fantastic all around and worked as both a stand alone match and as part of a bigger narrative of ROH as a promotion as a whole.

[Microstatistics]

I forgot about him while listing my top 10 contenders but he has a decent chance (still need to check out some phases of his career). As noted by someone, his world title run in 2005-2006 was just on a different planet in terms of variety and match quality. Easily the best US worker since 2000 and, at worst, top 5 ever.

[Exposer]

Bryan is someone who would make me feel ashamed if I left him off my ballot but I have no clue where to place him at this point. I've only seen a small snapshot of his Indie glory years and I thought he had down years in 2010-2011. He was excellent in 2012 and amazing in 2013 which of course helps his case. I liked the little bit he worked in both 2014-2015 as well. I've seen the Morishima match which is awesome, the London match from 03, a Styles match, a Claudio match, and a Nigel match. I've seen basically nothing else from his run prior to WWE. The main issue is tracking those matches down isn't as simple as it should be so I'm kind of not interested in doing searches outside of Google, YouTube, and Dailymotion. He needs to make my list because I think he's great. I just need to find the meat in order to figure out where.

[Dylan Waco]

Throughout this process Bryan has been talked about as favorably as anyone. I myself have argued that he's probably the closest thing to a consensus favorite in the modern hardcore fan universe where consensus is extremely difficult to come by. Having said that I do think he's gotten off a bit light in terms of critical assessment during this process.

 

Going through this thread it seems that there have been a couple of criticisms that have popped up along the way. Matt D criticized his selling, and the fact that he worked a style post-injury that seemed to say "damn my limitations!" rather than trying to adapt. A few people offered mild criticisms of him going too long at times, particularly during what is often cited as his peak run in ROH when he seemingly had the run of the place and could do whatever the hell he wanted (05-06). There was also some mild criticism from Joe Lanza and a few others about him being repetitive at various points in this career.

 

While Matt's comments were presented in a fashion where it would lead one to believe it would effect his ranking of him, the others felt like critiques put forward solely to acknowledge that he was not perfect. I confess that I'm probably closer to that than I am to Matt with what I'm about to write, but I do think there are some things Bryan fans should have to address, some of which were criticisms a decade ago that have oddly vanished with time.

 

The first criticism is something that came up during the first Smarkschoice GWE poll. That poll was conducted a the height of what is often cited as Bryan's peak, his 05/06 run as a heel ace of Ring of Honor. At the time people like Kevin Cook, Bix, and a lot of the regulars at DVDVR were very critical of Bryan working as a "fake heel." The argument was that he was a meta character who had sort of brought the crowd in on the act with him, rather than working hard to get real heat. He was often accused of preferring to be cute and appease the fans looking for a certain type of classic match, rather than building compelling storylines centered around traditional wrestling tropes. Others thought Bryan was simply incapable of garnering a true heel reaction, and saw this has a serious mark against his status as an all timer. While one can argue against this critique of Bryan's meta-heel gimmick, I think this is something that deserves to be addressed by his biggest supporters, especially since that run is still being held up as a major feather in the cap of a top ten case.

 

Another criticism that I think deserves to be thought about more is the argument touched upon by some here that Bryan would go too long, and do too much with certain guys during he aforementioned ROH run. While that has been mentioned in this thread, it seems to have been glossed over - I'm not sure it should be. If Bryan's peak years were marked by a penchant for excess and trying to force limited talents to work epics because that's what he wanted to do and/or that's what he believed was expected of him how good were they really? It's also worth noting that one could argue this tendency to go long might have the effect of sort of padding Bryan's stats in the eyes of some who may fetishize the idea of logged hours in the ring, or carrying on the tradition of NWA champions who allegedly went an hour every night. At the very least I think it's worth asking how common was this practice during Bryan's peak run, and how did that stance compare to other super indie darlings of the same time period (Styles, Joe, Aries, et)?

 

One final criticism I want to throw out there is something that I don't consider major, but one that hasn't been mentioned and one I may be alone on. I'm not sure how else to say it so I'll just be blunt - by the end of Bryan's ROH run I was bored as fuck with him, and felt that he had totally overstayed his welcome. This is not necessarily to say that I thought he was bad. However I was very happy he signed with the WWE not only because he deserved that spot, but because it meant I didn't have to see him work on the indies anymore where he had become a very bland act, that felt static and uninspired. I remember a Generico match from that last run that a lot of people loved to death that just bored me to tears because it felt like a weak willed greatest hits version of a guy who didn't care anymore. I have no clue if I'd still feel that way now, but I felt that way at the time, and it's the sort of thing that I can't completely shake when thinking about him as a top ten contender.

 

This post is largely an example of devil's advocacy. I'm likely to rate Bryan fairly high, and as noted before I don't think he's an outrageous candidate for the top spot overall. That said I do think he's someone who gets a bit of a pass, at least in the sense that the arguments against him seem to be left relatively unexplored even when they are out in the open.

[Rah]

Just to add a bit onto Dylan's last criticism, Danielson is very formula heavy. While his 2013 work was aces, there's few matches that are necessarily "different". They're all exciting, and he can fire you up so nothing feels bland or a rehash, but he fits his opponent into his formula rather than working around his opponent's style (akin what his peer, Cesaro, does). Honestly, I can see people burning on him like Flair in a few years, going back over his work in too quick a time. Maybe some see him as the better wrestler, and all that for now, but that formula is there and it's been like that since at least 2008. I sat through quite a few of his RoH matches in the PWO-GWE stream when we focused on him, back-to-back, and they definitely felt within a copyable formula and less organic. I'm not sitting down and watching 30 matches of his in a row, that would hurt almost anyone (and it did for Finlay), but his formula works when it should, and it allows bad wrestlers to look good which is a bonus and shows some mind for the business. I just wonder about his "longevity" as that top-spot placement he gets talked up as.

 

That said, he placed high in a mock list I made, and he'll place high here, too, if I do hand in a ballot.

[Hobbes]

The first criticism is something that came up during the first Smarkschoice GWE poll. That poll was conducted a the height of what is often cited as Bryan's peak, his 05/06 run as a heel ace of Ring of Honor. At the time people like Kevin Cook, Bix, and a lot of the regulars at DVDVR were very critical of Bryan working as a "fake heel." The argument was that he was a meta character who had sort of brought the crowd in on the act with him, rather than working hard to get real heat. He was often accused of preferring to be cute and appease the fans looking for a certain type of classic match, rather than building compelling storylines centered around traditional wrestling tropes. Others thought Bryan was simply incapable of garnering a true heel reaction, and saw this has a serious mark against his status as an all timer. While one can argue against this critique of Bryan's meta-heel gimmick, I think this is something that deserves to be addressed by his biggest supporters, especially since that run is still being held up as a major feather in the cap of a top ten case.

 

I don't know if that Bryan character was necessarily supposed to be a pure heel as much as something that straddled the face/heel line. I vaguely recall an old Observer during this period where Dave said Bryan's character was meant to be a face against the heels and a heel against the faces. It very much felt like his character was the cocky asshole who kept saying saying he was the best in the world, but who was so good you almost couldn't hold it against him because he just might be right. The old "I have til five referee" spot is a pretty good encapsulation of his persona at that time: he is not usually breaking the rules, but he's bending them to their limits, which again, made him come off as a guy who was being a prick, but a prick you admired because he was so smart.

 

Now, was it effective in terms of drawing heel heat when it needed to? Not always, as my recollections of that time period are that Bryan only got booed rarely against the absolutely most over stars. ROH at that time though was very much sold as a workrate promotion, where every DVD needed to have a "buzzworthy match" as a selling point. I don't know if under those constraints if Bryan, as the ace of the promotion, was going to be able to do some of the more toned down, traditional things to get a better heel reaction, and still fulfill the overall marching orders of the company. The character he did was about as good a middle ground as could be done I think, and got him more over than ever before within ROH.

 

 

 

Another criticism that I think deserves to be thought about more is the argument touched upon by some here that Bryan would go too long, and do too much with certain guys during he aforementioned ROH run. While that has been mentioned in this thread, it seems to have been glossed over - I'm not sure it should be. If Bryan's peak years were marked by a penchant for excess and trying to force limited talents to work epics because that's what he wanted to do and/or that's what he believed was expected of him how good were they really? It's also worth noting that one could argue this tendency to go long might have the effect of sort of padding Bryan's stats in the eyes of some who may fetishize the idea of logged hours in the ring, or carrying on the tradition of NWA champions who allegedly went an hour every night. At the very least I think it's worth asking how common was this practice during Bryan's peak run, and how did that stance compare to other super indie darlings of the same time period (Styles, Joe, Aries, et)?

 

The Hero/Punk IWA-MS marathons came before most of Bryan's longer matches, and quite honestly are probably a bigger part of those two's indy legacies than Bryan's. Bryan probably did lengthier matches more often than his peers, but that was probably at least in part simply due to the fact that he had more opportunities to have the free reign to do that than others did, as most of his longest matches came during his ROH title reign when he was the focal point of the promotion and had the run of the place. Super Dragon and Joey Ryan worked a 60 minute iron man match, AJ and Christopher Daniels worked a 60 minute draw in PWG, and Punk would go on to work the two hour long Joe matches. Bryan by comparison worked the hour plus match with Aries pre-title reign, and then had his string of lengthy matches as champion, the two with Strong, the Cabana 60 minute draw, the Nigel 60 minute draw, the Joe 60 minute draw. The Cabana and Nigel matches happened on the same weekend for ROH, so those in particular felt like they were being done more as a gimmick than anything else. Bryan generally though seemed to like 15-18 and 20-25 as his two sweet spots for match length, although he tended to like to work 30-35 in his highest profile matches.

 

In terms of "padding his stats", while the sheer fact that he worked 60 minutes plus probably bought him some attention and cred from some circles (Although again, not as much as the Hero/Punk matches brought those two), I don't think they really padded his case as a great worker by people in the long term. None of those Bryan epics seem to be viewed as anywhere close to Bryan's best by most long term fans of his. The Aries match comes closest in terms of how it's perceived, but even at the time it was released on DVD, I recall fan reaction being split on if it was great or far too excessive and masturbatory. The Colt draw got some "You've got to see this" buzz, but only around the fact that Bryan separated his shoulder eight minutes in and still went 60. The lengthy Strong matches weren't universally praised either, despite a hard sell from Gabe, and were mostly overshadowed by the weird worked shoot "these guys really don't like each other and are being unprofessional" stuff that went along with them. I don't think many people would consider Bryan's 60 minute draws with Joe and Nigel to be his best matches with either guy.

[Jimmy Redman]

Yeah I agree, I see Bryan's "meta heel" run as not an inability to play a true heel, but a conscious decision based on the expectations that were placed on him at the time as ROH Champion, and finding a way to play a character while still delivering the high-quality matches that ROH's appeal and marketability was based on.

 

You can watch his late 2011 heel turn, through all of the monster matches and AJ stuff and see that he's perfectly capable of playing a "true" heel and garnering heat when it is required of him. He was a babyface again within 12 months but I don't think that's on him as much as the fans just never want to boo the guy for too long. And I think the same holds true for ROH - he's so good in the ring that the ROH fans would cheer him anyway for the great matches, and again, abandoning the great matches wasn't an option since their business was built on great matches selling DVDs.

[InYourCase]

The first criticism is something that came up during the first Smarkschoice GWE poll. That poll was conducted a the height of what is often cited as Bryan's peak, his 05/06 run as a heel ace of Ring of Honor. At the time people like Kevin Cook, Bix, and a lot of the regulars at DVDVR were very critical of Bryan working as a "fake heel." The argument was that he was a meta character who had sort of brought the crowd in on the act with him, rather than working hard to get real heat. He was often accused of preferring to be cute and appease the fans looking for a certain type of classic match, rather than building compelling storylines centered around traditional wrestling tropes. Others thought Bryan was simply incapable of garnering a true heel reaction, and saw this has a serious mark against his status as an all timer. While one can argue against this critique of Bryan's meta-heel gimmick, I think this is something that deserves to be addressed by his biggest supporters, especially since that run is still being held up as a major feather in the cap of a top ten case.

 

One final criticism I want to throw out there is something that I don't consider major, but one that hasn't been mentioned and one I may be alone on. I'm not sure how else to say it so I'll just be blunt - by the end of Bryan's ROH run I was bored as fuck with him, and felt that he had totally overstayed his welcome. This is not necessarily to say that I thought he was bad. However I was very happy he signed with the WWE not only because he deserved that spot, but because it meant I didn't have to see him work on the indies anymore where he had become a very bland act, that felt static and uninspired. I remember a Generico match from that last run that a lot of people loved to death that just bored me to tears because it felt like a weak willed greatest hits version of a guy who didn't care anymore. I have no clue if I'd still feel that way now, but I felt that way at the time, and it's the sort of thing that I can't completely shake when thinking about him as a top ten contender.

 

I look at his "fake heel" run as a major positive. I watched all of his ROH run in hindsight, so maybe there's just something that I'm missing because I wasn't watching it DVD-to-DVD in 2006, but to me, he was just too respected by that crowd to garner any form of "true heel heat". The crowd knew he was the best and he played into that. I loved his character work from that run. Like in the NYC KENTA match, he messes up on his Liger Surfboard thing and as soon as the crowd starts to give him shit, he gives it right back. It's tongue in cheek in a way, but it was also an appropriate reaction for who he was and where he was working. I thought it was brilliant stuff. Plus, 2006 ROH had Hero, Necro, and Super Dragon that were doing heel things. Whatever Dragon was doing was going to pale in comparison to those three.

 

Is it just Bryan's late-ROH work that bothers you, or his entire indie run? Because his 2009 ROH run wasn't anything special, but he put in a few killer performances in PWG and I think his run for Gabe in 2009/2010 is insanely great. The EVOLVE matches with Fish and Sawa are great (I'm really high on the Fish match) and I can't say enough good things about his short DGUSA run. Legitimately great matches with Doi (who was struggling at the time), YAMATO, and Shingo, and a really fun brawl with Ambrose. 2009 ROH was a bore, but that could also be a case of him not liking the way Pearce was doing things or the way he was being booked. The Morishima feud was over, he was no longer teaming with Aries, and he never found his groove on the HDNet tapings. If you look at his booking from 2009, it's all over the place. Whatever he was doing with The Embassy ended rather quickly and he was just doing "stuff" until his farewell tour. I really think that plays into his overall performance (and speaks to how bad Pearce was in his role) because whether it was with Low Ki, Homicide, Nigel, Morishima, or KENTA - he was always building up to something. His matches played off one another and there was a constant sense of progression. In 2009, that stopped. It showed in his work.

[Venegas]

I think the whole 'not being a real heel' thing had more to with the ROH fans than Bryan's ability/inability to garner organic heat. Maybe Bryan did indeed have a 'wink wink' approach to his shtick, but so did the fans. The same fans who would boo him 5 minutes into the match would chant 'Best In The World' afterwards. It would've seemed ridiculous in 1980 Memphis, but for 2006 ROH that's the type of crowd they were playing to. These were the same fans who cheered CM Punk for manipulating them with the most brilliant heel turn in modern wrestling history.

[Dylan Waco]

I generally agree that it was the nature of the crowd, but I also think it's fair to say that Bryan encouraged it. Whether that was the right track to take or not is debatable. It certainly mattered less with a promotion that had the business model ROH did then it would for a more traditional promotion. That said it's not as if ROH heels couldn't get real heat. Some absolutely did, and in one case it was done by deliberately tempering what he could do to annoy the workcentric attitude of the ROH faithful.

[Tim Cooke]

Length of matches -

 

Regardless of whether it was looked at as an average, good, great, poor match, during the 2000's indy boom, *most* matches went 5-10 minute too long. The number of matches that fell from good to average or very good to gooo because of five to ten additional minutes is astounding. I think the same can be said for a lot of matches from different promotions and styles from over the years. Maybe this is a Danielson problem (it's a criticism but not sure how valid) but if it is, it becomes an issue with anyone who spent a good portion of the 60's, 70's, and early 80's working hour long draws.

[Loss]

I said to Dylan elsewhere that I do think it's possible I and some others overrate him at least a little because he's so easy to like. If this was a Nicest Wrestler Ever ballot, he'd probably win in a cakewalk. His disposition makes him a natural babyface. In terms of getting heat in ROH, I think there are so many contextual asterisks there that it's not something I would hold against him too much. Others did get real heat in ROH, yes, but they also weren't having the types of matches that would sell DVDs. I am wowing at myself as I type that one because it sounds like the exact same arguments made against Bryan when he started flirting with the top in WWE. ROH was a strange animal though, in that people were so sick of the WWE-style presentation of wrestling that they were willing to throw out the baby with the bathwater in terms of staples of American wrestling such as babyfaces and heels. The idea was really just to deliver matches with high star ratings, and any character work was really just given lip service for the most part. I don't say that to excuse him. In fact, I'd rather look at his heel run in 2011-2012 WWE. He was over, but again, he's so tough to dislike that he didn't have nearly as transcendant a heel run as he did a babyface one. When I watch matches from him against Punk and Sheamus in 2012, I also see a guy who isn't really taking crazy bumps that much, and is doing as much matwork as the WWE style would allow. I don't think he started really going overboard with the ugly bumps until he turned babyface.

[Luchaundead]

If his retirement today is real does that effect your ballot?

[Eduardo]

I never got to see his FIP work, but one of the counterpoints that used to be made on DVDVR to the meta-heel point was that his FIP work showed that he could work heel champion in front of an audience that was different from ROH.

 

I think the repetition point, which was true (but also is true of other all time greats like El Hijo del Santo) gets ignored for whatever reason. I think people give Danielson the benefit of the doubt, or say it was him being meta as well. But that shouldn't change anything, really.

 

I love Danielson, but at times, his selling could be disappointing, across all promotions. I remember in 2014, he wasn't selling the arm injury they were working at the time, and Dave Meltzer was claiming that WWE told him specifically not to sell it, or not to make it the focus.

 

Having said all this, I still would rank him ridiculously high on a ballot.

[soup23]

If his retirement today is real does that effect your ballot?

 

Doesn't effect me in any way because I wasn't voting on potential, but it does strike me in a finality way that I can look back on his fifteen year career now comparatively to his contemporaries like AJ and Hero who hypothetically have more to give int he wrestling arena.

[Grimmas]

 

If his retirement today is real does that effect your ballot?

 

Doesn't effect me in any way because I wasn't voting on potential, but it does strike me in a finality way that I can look back on his fifteen year career now comparatively to his contemporaries like AJ and Hero who hypothetically have more to give int he wrestling arena.

 

Voting for people working in their prime was going to be a struggle for me. His retirement may help his standing on this ballot.

[Childs]

The first criticism is something that came up during the first Smarkschoice GWE poll. That poll was conducted a the height of what is often cited as Bryan's peak, his 05/06 run as a heel ace of Ring of Honor. At the time people like Kevin Cook, Bix, and a lot of the regulars at DVDVR were very critical of Bryan working as a "fake heel." The argument was that he was a meta character who had sort of brought the crowd in on the act with him, rather than working hard to get real heat. He was often accused of preferring to be cute and appease the fans looking for a certain type of classic match, rather than building compelling storylines centered around traditional wrestling tropes. Others thought Bryan was simply incapable of garnering a true heel reaction, and saw this has a serious mark against his status as an all timer. While one can argue against this critique of Bryan's meta-heel gimmick, I think this is something that deserves to be addressed by his biggest supporters, especially since that run is still being held up as a major feather in the cap of a top ten case.

 

Another criticism that I think deserves to be thought about more is the argument touched upon by some here that Bryan would go too long, and do too much with certain guys during he aforementioned ROH run. While that has been mentioned in this thread, it seems to have been glossed over - I'm not sure it should be. If Bryan's peak years were marked by a penchant for excess and trying to force limited talents to work epics because that's what he wanted to do and/or that's what he believed was expected of him how good were they really? It's also worth noting that one could argue this tendency to go long might have the effect of sort of padding Bryan's stats in the eyes of some who may fetishize the idea of logged hours in the ring, or carrying on the tradition of NWA champions who allegedly went an hour every night. At the very least I think it's worth asking how common was this practice during Bryan's peak run, and how did that stance compare to other super indie darlings of the same time period (Styles, Joe, Aries, et)?

 

I've always had a so-what reaction to the criticism of his "meta-heel" run. It felt like people trying to hammer him into preconceived boxes while ignoring the simple reality that he was hugely over playing the character. He anchored a fairly hot promotion playing the character. If that run doesn't work for someone's particular aesthetic sensibility, that's fine. But it never bothered me, and I have trouble seeing it as a broad negative.

 

I do think he fell into a little rut going long for the sake of going long. In fact, I prefer '07 Danielson to '06 Danielson largely because he streamlined. But I don't think going pointlessly long was a huge problem for him for the majority of his career. It strikes me as the kind of modest flaw you can find with any of the top candidates.

 

Bryan meant a great deal to my wrestling fandom. He wasn't the first worker to excite me as I began to dive deeper around 2005, but he was the one who connected with me most powerfully. I bought countless DVDs and attended dozens of shows specifically to watch him wrestle, and I rarely regretted the effort or expense. He gave me a reason to care about WWE in a way I had not probably since childhood. If all of that means I look past some of his flaws, well, so be it. He got me re-invested in being a wrestling fan, and that counts for a whole lot.

[stomperspc]

All of these criticisms have been around as long as Bryan has been around. They are all valid. He did hit a period in his career where he was always going too long and sometimes for no good reason. I never saw a “playing heel” issue with him as much as he did not seem comfortable/natural acting and emoting as either a face or a heel early in his career (some of his fiery face comeback stuff early on is goofy). He was stale at the end of his ROH/indie run, although I would argue almost anyone would be in a similar situation (and Danielson himself was reportedly ready to hang it up before he got the WWE job). He had his misses and his weaknesses, there is no doubt about that.

 

I am well aware of all of those blemishes but Bryan will still be in my top 10.

 

It is a stretch to imply that people are overlooking, ignoring or glossing over Bryan’s weaknesses in rating him highly. Speaking for myself, I am well aware of the points against Bryan as I am of anyone I am going to rank highly. I believe that those blemishes do not define his overall body of work.

 

For every bad ill-advised 60 minute match he wrestled in ROH, there are an equal number of quality long matches (London 2/3 falls, 2006 Strong title match as two examples) with the majority falling in the “okay – good” range. It also seems overblown a bit as the time period (2006) where he was going long the most also included many quality 20-minute matches and quite a few 15-minutes or below. If Bryan spent a year+ wrestling long matches to bad results, obviously that would hurt his case but I am not sure I agree that is what happened. What actually happened was that he got caught up in the idea of going 60 minutes which led to some mixed results. In the vast majority of his matches during that period he either didn’t go overly long or wrestled matches that overstayed their welcome by 5-10 minutes which is what most indie matches then and now do. His “too long” matches were generally still good or better (obviously there were misses) so it is not a big strike for me.

FWIW, that era is also one of the weaker parts of his career (along with 2008-2009) and not the years I’d make his case on anyway.

 

As for the “playing heel” or lack of genuine acting/emoting, that was something that even in his early days his positives (intensity, believable physicality, offense, selling, ect.) overcame. It is also an area he improved on as he gained experience. By the time of the Morishima series, Danielson was excellent as a tough and fiery babyface. He only got better in WWE in that regard. He got over as an insincere heel in WWE. It was a weakness, but also something that was covered up by his strengths until he improved in that area.

 

I am a believer that in a list like this you evaluate guys on what they do well, not what they do poorly. I think doing it the other way around (listing what a wrestler does wrong) makes it easy to miss the forest through the trees. Danielson had a period where he went too long more often than one would like and struggled to come off genuine as a face or a heel early on in his career. Both during and after he struggled with those issues, he still delivered on a regular basis and as a low of a floor as of his peers. Historically, I would say he matches up well with the highly regarded wrestlers of any era. He did so many things well. He was a great offensive wrestler, he was always evolving/adding new wrinkles, he generally sold well, he worked well in different styles/environments, he got over most everywhere he went, he ended up being a great babyface, he was a great tag worker in WWE, and so on.

 

Every wrestler on my list is going to have significant flaws. The great ones are going to have enough positives and enough quality work to more than overcome than shortfalls.

[Benbeeach]

Honestly if those Are Danielson's only flaws, he seems like top 15-20 guaranteed guy on almost every ballot at worst.

[Jmare007]

One final criticism I want to throw out there is something that I don't consider major, but one that hasn't been mentioned and one I may be alone on. I'm not sure how else to say it so I'll just be blunt - by the end of Bryan's ROH run I was bored as fuck with him, and felt that he had totally overstayed his welcome. This is not necessarily to say that I thought he was bad. However I was very happy he signed with the WWE not only because he deserved that spot, but because it meant I didn't have to see him work on the indies anymore where he had become a very bland act, that felt static and uninspired. I remember a Generico match from that last run that a lot of people loved to death that just bored me to tears because it felt like a weak willed greatest hits version of a guy who didn't care anymore. I have no clue if I'd still feel that way now, but I felt that way at the time, and it's the sort of thing that I can't completely shake when thinking about him as a top ten contender.

 

I think that's fair. But I still think the stuff he did in the 16 Carat Gold Tournament in 08', his EVOLVE/DGUSA work or his Final Countdown Tour (except in ROH, kinda weird that's were I though he had his most uninspired matches on his farewell run) compensated his staleness in ROH and PWG in that period.

 

I do think his work kinda became "good/great" by default to some fans - myself included - during that time, when in hindsight he wasn't doing anything that remarkable.

[Clayton Jones]

The idea he was never legitimately booed in ROH is simply not true. If you had been there live for the matches he had in his feud with Delirious for example, you would have felt that the majority of those crowds were sincerely behind Delirious and against Danielson. When they would chant "same old shit" during matches like this it was not tongue in cheek. I think to an extent ROH crowds are being given too much credit for being super smart because the major matches that everyone has seen are in front of the largest crowds such as NYC and Chicago. Your average ROH crowd was still full of mouth breathing mongoloids of all walks who were just as prone to overreaction and flavor of the month groupthink as your typical pro wrestling crowd. So yes, during this time period there were legitimately large groups of fans who thought Danielson was boring and needed to go as champ. And he played to that perfectly and hand crafted babyface reactions for mid card guys like Delirious, Strong, and Cabana that were beyond what they achieved for the vast majority of their careers.

 

And another great match from this run that flies in the face of the argument that he played to the crowd too much is VS Shelley during the whole CZW deal. That's a great piece of working against a crowd to draw them in and definitely in my top 10 in Danielson's career.