Who is better - Bryan Danielson/Daniel Bryan or Bret Hart?

[MoS]

This came to me cuz I recently saw a tweet which said "How has Bryan been one of the best wrestlers in the world for 20 years? Even Bret couldn't do that." 

For me, this makes no sense. For me, this answer is obvious. I love Bret, he is great, but Daniel Bryan is one of the GOAT contenders, clearly several steps above Bret, in the league of Flair, Jumbo, Hansen, Casas, etc. Bret is great, but he is not in that league. Bryan is. Bryan debuted in 1998. He had a bunch of great matches in 2001, and he was consistently great in 2002, and he remains a consistently best-in-the-world wrestler in 2020, and has been so during the entire time period, apart from his retirement. 

On the other hand, Bret was a good tag wrestler in the 80s. I know the Hart Foundation is pushed as a lot, but I think they are an overrated tag team; they are very good, but they were rarely great. He had a very good 1990s, but the only two years I can see being comparable to Daniel is 1994 and 1997. Everything else is several steps below Bryan's work. And gain, Bryan has been at this elite GOAT-level work for 20 years. 

So, let's all start 2021 with this debate. Whom do you all think is better? I would love to hear your thoughts on this comparison.

[sek69]

Honestly I always saw Bret as a more technically sound Ric Flair. He is obviously very good in ring, but he had a pattern he tended to stick to in a lot of his matches. There's a reason he was the one who the term Five Moves of Doom was coined for long before it was known as a Cena thing. I don't fault a guy for falling in a pattern on those infamously long WWF death tours, but it does mean his work won't match up well with someone like Bryan. 

[Laz]

Something that needs to be taken into account is that Bryan rose to prominence in an era where "have a great match" was an ethos held above others. Every era had talent who wanted to have the best match of the night, sure, but was there really a company whose selling point was the actual quality of the in-ring product before ROH, specifically the years that Bryan was active in it?

Bret also didn't have access to the caliber of talent that Bryan did. Bret's peak years as a performer saw him have only a handful of people who could conceivably keep up with him, whereas Bryan was one of many individuals in a talent-heavy scene. This may actually be in Bryan's favor, now that I think about it, because there were so many other people who could have taken attention away from him and yet none ever really did.

Damn. I came in here ready to defend Bret against my personal pick for generational GOAT and wound up making better arguments internally for Bryan being better anyway.

[NintendoLogic]

I've come to realize that matches in the 20-30 minute range that combine elements of technical wrestling, brawling, and highspots (the old Roy Shire philosophy) are the ones I find the most consistently rewarding. For my money, Bret was probably the best ever at constructing that kind of match. Like most wrestlers of this generation, Danielson is a victim of the disease of more. I'm hard-pressed to think of a high-profile Danielson match that wouldn't benefit from being at least five minutes shorter.

[Tenese Sarwieh]

I love me Bret but in the case of who's better I'm taking Bryan. His ability to make any opponent he's in the ring with look like a credible challenger regardless of their level of experience leaves me in in awe. 

[Coffey]

I think Bret Hart is top 10 all-time.

I think Bryan Danielson isn't.

So, for me, it's Bret Hart.

That's not to say that Bryan Danielson isn't also great. Also, both wrestlers had flaws & weren't perfect. I think what puts Bret higher for me is the era that he did it in & that the majority of his great stuff was on the biggest stages, not on the Indies. Maybe that's unfair to American Dragon but that's how I feel. Having a great feud & match in Ring of Honor is not the same thing as having a great feud & match in WWF culminating at Wrestlemania. Both men did it, Bret with Austin & Bryan with HHH/Batista/Orton. But it felt like Bret was in the mix of things for years & Bryan was hurt, or retired, or going through a lot of start/stop pushes. Admittedly, some of it is booking. I'm sure some of it is also my age, nostalgia, rose-colored glasses & having a disdain for recency bias.

I do think that Bret took himself too seriously & that Bryan Danielson has him beaten by leaps & bounds in the comedy department but at the top of the card, I'm looking for seriousness, so that worked for me.

In my Greatest Wrestler Ever list, which crazily is now just a few months away from being five years old, I had Bret Hart at #7 & Daniel Bryan at #36. I do think that Daniel Bryan has moved up for me since then but I actually think Bret Hart has too. He might be in my top 5 now. I remember vividly thinking the board as a whole was insane when Daniel Bryan finished #5 overall. 

[sek69]

8 minutes ago, Coffey said:

That's not to say that Bryan Danielson isn't also great. Also, both wrestlers had flaws & weren't perfect. I think what puts Bret higher for me is the era that he did it in & that the majority of his great stuff was on the biggest stages, not on the Indies. Maybe that's unfair to American Dragon but that's how I feel.

You're not wrong, but at the same time I'd argue some of Bryan's best work was some of the amazing carry jobs he's done in WWE. They may not be technical masterpieces, but in terms of being a better professional wrestler I think Bryan has the edge just because he's been able to do as much or more while working with less in most cases.

[C.S.]

Are people really holding Bret's tag team run and lack of main event singles matches during that run against him? Come on. Different time. Different philosophy. He was never going to be pushed as a top singles guy in the '80s (even in the NWA) or given access to the quality of opponents Bryan was at that point in their early respective careers. Don't think it's fair to use that as a knock against Bret.

Also, as others said, "have the best match" was the philosophy when Bryan was coming up. It was not the philosophy in three shows a night, twice on Sundays WWF of the 1980s. With that said, have we ever heard reports of Bret dogging it at house shows?

IMO, compare their main event runs and go from there.

For me, it's Bret. Does Bryan really have one classic, career-defining feud under his belt? Not in WWE. Bret does.

Note: I said feud, not matches. Bryan has a ton of great rasslin' matches, but name his one defining career opponent. You can't. (And I don't mean what he did in bingo halls in front of 200 people.)

[sek69]

His feud against the Authority that capped off with him winning the main event at Mania was pretty neat. I thought that was pretty career defining. It defines his WWE career according to their canon. 

[ohtani's jacket]

I'm not qualified to answer since I'm still discovering Danielson's work, but is it really a fair comparison? Bret's career has been dissected and put through the ringer for the past 25 years or more. Danielson receives very little criticism and there certainly hasn't been much blowback yet. I feel like we need a more complete take on Danielson before comparing him to past greats. (To be fair, there has been some criticism of his work in this thread. I'd like to read more.)

[Badlittlekitten]

I find it increasingly hard to rate modern WWE workers in GOAT terms because the machine is so absolutely fucking rotten it sucks away all their upside and positives. Even focusing on 'great matches' is a struggle because they're often meaningless, heatless and spoiled by stupid finishes. 

So yeah, Bryan probably has a lot more great matches but Bret had more matches I actually cared about. Plus 1997 Bret >>>>>> everything.

[Makai Club #1]

Bryan is indeed talented and an excellent wrestler. Extremely consistent for almost all of his active years whether it's making the best out of Gabe's fascination with NWA World Title matches or WWE's "we don't want to actually push you to this point but we have to". But his matches don't ever give me the feeling of the investment that Bret Hart matches can. And I say this a someone who grew up watching Daniel Bryan (I was like 10 when I first knew who Daniel Bryan was). And investment is always going to top out for me. There is no real argument against either though. Both are quality wrestlers and it simply comes down to who do you prefer. And to me, Bret is the one I prefer. 

[MoS]

1 hour ago, C.S. said:

Are people really holding Bret's tag team run and lack of main event singles matches during that run against him? Come on. Different time. Different philosophy. He was never going to be pushed as a top singles guy in the '80s (even in the NWA) or given access to the quality of opponents Bryan was at that point in their early respective careers. Don't think it's fair to use that as a knock against Bret.

Also, as others said, "have the best match" was the philosophy when Bryan was coming up. It was not the philosophy in three shows a night, twice on Sundays WWF of the 1980s. With that said, have we ever heard reports of Bret dogging it at house shows?

IMO, compare their main event runs and go from there.

For me, it's Bret. Does Bryan really have one classic, career-defining feud under his belt? Not in WWE. Bret does.

Note: I said feud, not matches. Bryan has a ton of great rasslin' matches, but name his one defining career opponent. You can't. (And I don't mean what he did in bingo halls in front of 200 people.)

This is a pretty ignorant post. Dismissing Bryan's run because "bingo halls in front of 200 people" is insulting in and of itself, but it can easily be flipped over and held against Bret because for most of the early and mid-90s, Bret was headlining in high school gyms in front of barely a thousand people because business was in the toilet. As far as classic feuds for Bryan Danuelson goes, you really should check out his stuff with Morishima. He also wrestled in Tokyo Dome. WHich, you know, is not a bingo hall. Further, he was the tag team champ in the 80s and had plenty of great teams to work with. Yet the Hart Foundation wouldn't be in the top 5 WWF teams of the 80s. You know why? Because other teams had better matches. 

Further, yes, there were constant reports of Bret dogging it at house shows. It was a big theme actually. One of the earliest things Shawn fans used to say was that Shawn was better cuz he does not dog it at house shows, while Bret did. 

The mentality of "great match" is something I can turn around and use for Bryan and against Bret. Bret worked in a system where great matches were not the expectation. However, Bret clearly cared about having great matches, because that was his only calling card. It was the only way he could get noticed. So he had plenty of motivation to put up great matches. It was the reason he didn't do much on house show but turned things up on TV and PPVs. Because he was the only one attempting to have great matches, it was easier for him to stand out. I don't believe he would have had the reputation of being the best if he was in early 90s WCW where the calibre and level of wrestling was much higher. On the  other hand, when Bryan came along, everyone was trying to have a great match and steal the show. Being noticed therefore was much harder. The fact that he managed to stand out in that mentality and gain a reputation of being the best for YEARS AND YEARS is a point in his favour, not against him. He also managed to get over organically and force the promotion to push him to the top in WWE, when WWE had been a workrate promotion for years and probably wanted him to be the midcard workrate guy having great matches. 

Even in WWE, Bryan has the Authority feud, a feud that was not only classic and career-defining, it literally reshaped the contours of WWE booking and fan interaction and participation, the ramifications of which are still being felt to this day. Bret has the Austin feud as a classic feud and..that's it. Bret and Shawn never really had a feud, because they hated each other too much to work together. Bryan as a heel also had a great feud with Kofi. Further,Bryan-Roman is shaping up to become a pretty epic feud, since now they have wrestled each other and feuded as fellow faces, heel Bryan and face ROman, and face Bryan and heel Roman. That is exactly how you get an epic feud. As far as feuds against useless big men go, Bryan-Wyatt matches trump Bret-Diesel matches. Dismissing Bryan's run as only having incredible matches is also stupid given that at this point, he has been a WWE headliner longer than Bret ever was. He has had more WWE classic main events than Bret did. Really, your reasoning amounts to "What I saw as a kid is more important, therefore Bret is better." 

[MoS]

9 hours ago, NintendoLogic said:

I've come to realize that matches in the 20-30 minute range that combine elements of technical wrestling, brawling, and highspots (the old Roy Shire philosophy) are the ones I find the most consistently rewarding. For my money, Bret was probably the best ever at constructing that kind of match. Like most wrestlers of this generation, Danielson is a victim of the disease of more. I'm hard-pressed to think of a high-profile Danielson match that wouldn't benefit from being at least five minutes shorter.

How many times did Bret do this though? His volume is shockingly thin. His best matches are really really excellent, but there are not a whole lot of them. 

[Kadaveri]

15 hours ago, MoS said:

 Bryan debuted in 1998.

Gonna be a nerd here. Bryan debuted on October 4th 1999.

[Clayton Jones]

Danielson/Morishima is one of my top 5 feuds of all time, and the only one where one person had to entirely carry the promos (spoiler: it was Bryan).

[C.S.]

Let's go through your post piece by piece:

3 hours ago, MoS said:

This is a pretty ignorant post. Dismissing Bryan's run because "bingo halls in front of 200 people" is insulting in and of itself, but it can easily be flipped over and held against Bret because for most of the early and mid-90s, Bret was headlining in high school gyms in front of barely a thousand people because business was in the toilet.  

That's true about Bret, but he still had national and international television coverage then. Bryan, by and large, did not.

3 hours ago, MoS said:

As far as classic feuds for Bryan Danuelson goes, you really should check out his stuff with Morishima. He also wrestled in Tokyo Dome. WHich, you know, is not a bingo hall.  

Doing one-shots or a few tours in Japan in this era means nothing to me, because that's something every ham 'n hagger from ROH has had access to. Carving a lengthy career there is far more impressive. Of course, I am not blind to Bryan's talent at all. He could have been a top guy in Japan for decades if he wanted to be - assuming there were no "gaijin" or "Junior Heavyweight" politics standing in his way.

3 hours ago, MoS said:

Yet the Hart Foundation wouldn't be in the top 5 WWF teams of the 80s. You know why? Because other teams had better matches. 

So, who are the five teams ahead of them? They're easily top 2-3 in my book for WWF teams of the 1980s. 

3 hours ago, MoS said:

 Further, yes, there were constant reports of Bret dogging it at house shows. It was a big theme actually. One of the earliest things Shawn fans used to say was that Shawn was better cuz he does not dog it at house shows, while Bret did. 

I was genuinely asking. I still wouldn't hold it against Bret though. That schedule was grueling. Why kill yourself in Peoria when the fans of that time won't care or appreciate it, and Vince won't see it and reward you for it? I wouldn't. 

3 hours ago, MoS said:

The mentality of "great match" is something I can turn around and use for Bryan and against Bret. Bret worked in a system where great matches were not the expectation. However, Bret clearly cared about having great matches, because that was his only calling card. It was the only way he could get noticed. So he had plenty of motivation to put up great matches. It was the reason he didn't do much on house show but turned things up on TV and PPVs. Because he was the only one attempting to have great matches, it was easier for him to stand out. I don't believe he would have had the reputation of being the best if he was in early 90s WCW where the calibre and level of wrestling was much higher. On the  other hand, when Bryan came along, everyone was trying to have a great match and steal the show. Being noticed therefore was much harder. The fact that he managed to stand out in that mentality and gain a reputation of being the best for YEARS AND YEARS is a point in his favour, not against him. He also managed to get over organically and force the promotion to push him to the top in WWE, when WWE had been a workrate promotion for years and probably wanted him to be the midcard workrate guy having great matches. 

Yes and no. Bryan also came up in a system and among fans who actively cared about "great matches." Bret did not. He made fans graduate from the Hulk/Warrior type of match to appreciating his more technical style. I'd argue that what Bret accomplished was just as impressive in his own way. Also, he doesn't get that main event spot if he doesn't get over slowly but surely in the midcard/IC scene. Acting like Bryan was the only self-created star and Bret wasn't is a ludicrous myth. Yes, luck and circumstances helped Bret along (steroid trial, etc.), but the same is true of Bryan - that doesn't happen if fans don't completely shit all over Batista and a stale Batista-Orton main event.

3 hours ago, MoS said:

 Even in WWE, Bryan has the Authority feud, a feud that was not only classic and career-defining, it literally reshaped the contours of WWE booking and fan interaction and participation, the ramifications of which are still being felt to this day. Bret has the Austin feud as a classic feud and..that's it. Bret and Shawn never really had a feud, because they hated each other too much to work together. Bryan as a heel also had a great feud with Kofi. Further,Bryan-Roman is shaping up to become a pretty epic feud, since now they have wrestled each other and feuded as fellow faces, heel Bryan and face ROman, and face Bryan and heel Roman. That is exactly how you get an epic feud. 

You are really starting to lose me here.

Bret vs. Shawn wasn't a "real" feud because they ended up hating each other? Whaaaaaat?! They feuded for the better part of ten years, on and off - first with The Hart and Hart Foundation and The Rockers, after as singles in the IC Division, and finally as main eventers for the World Title. That is absolutely one of Bret's signature feuds. So is Austin. So are a few others. 

The Authority feud reshaping WWE booking is such a double-edged sword, but it would of course be unfair to hold that against Bryan.

The Kofi feud was very good, but it was one and done. With that said, I'd count Piper as one of Bret's signature feuds even though it was also one and done, so I'll give you Kofimania because it was epic.

We'll see if the Bryan vs. Roman feud becomes as epic as you're imagining, but most of what they've done in the past was pretty forgettable feud-wise. Doesn't mean I wouldn't love to see more though, because I absolutely would and I hope we do.

3 hours ago, MoS said:

As far as feuds against useless big men go, Bryan-Wyatt matches trump Bret-Diesel matches. Dismissing Bryan's run as only having incredible matches is also stupid given that at this point, he has been a WWE headliner longer than Bret ever was. He has had more WWE classic main events than Bret did. Really, your reasoning amounts to "What I saw as a kid is more important, therefore Bret is better." 

This is where you've completely fucking lost me...

No Wyatt match - I don't care who his opponent is - will ever be better than any Bret match.

But I suppose that's because I saw Bret vs. Diesel (very good matches, BTW) as a kid. 

P.S. Starting a thread centered around a question and then sniping at someone who gives you an answer you don't like or doesn't pick the same wrestler you did is considered very poor form.

[Microstatistics]

Both should be Top 20 for me and so are pretty comparable. I'd rank Bryan a few spots higher though.

Things might be different now considering it has been 5 years since GWE, but at the time I remember Bret suffered from intense anti-WWF bias. He is considered one of the GOAT outside our circle so I suspect people wanted to knock his reputation down a peg, which is understandable to an extent. But, due to the dreaded pendulum effect, they ended up overdoing it and you had people claiming he didn't have the volume to make a Top 100. The hate he got for making the Top 20 was ridiculous.

Bryan's biggest flaw is (was?) lack of focus. Had he tightened up many of his ROH "epics" by 10-15 minutes, he'd be a solid #1 contender for me. There is a lot of neat stuff in those matches but the lack of structure and coherence limits the ceiling.

[MoS]

2 hours ago, C.S. said:

Bret vs. Shawn wasn't a "real" feud because they ended up hating each other? Whaaaaaat?! They feuded for the better part of ten years, on and off - first with The Hart and Hart Foundation and The Rockers, after as singles in the IC Division, and finally as main eventers for the World Title. That is absolutely one of Bret's signature feuds. So is Austin. So are a few others. 

They absolutely didn't feud for the better part of 10 years. That's completely inaccurate. You cannot say on one hand that you don't count one-off appearances and matches for Bryan, yet use one-off matches between Shawn and Bret as proof that they feuded. That's logically inconsistent. They started properly feuding in 1996. After that, they had a sum total of 2 matches. Sure, they sniped at each other on promos. But there was no concentrated, focused feuding. And Bryan and Roman have been feuding since the days of Team Hell No v. Shield. Further, how is Bret and Shawn a classic, all-time feud? They had SS 1992 and WM 12, two boring matches, and one infamous match which is more about Bret v. Vince than anything. This is not something I cooked up right now either - we have discussed this before - 

 

As far as hating Wyatt; it's not as if I am a big fan either. But their match at Royal Rumble 2014 was excellent; far better than any Bret-Diesel match. Wyatt family v. Bryan had some really strong matches. I have absolutely no use for the Fiend, but Bryan had the only decent match of the Fiend's run. 

Your point about Bret making fans care about workrate is also incorrect imo. Bret and Shawn were pushed to the top when the steroid scandal hit and Vince needed a small non-roiding guy as champ. There was no surging momentum in favour of Bret which led to Vince changing his entire wrestling philosophy. There's the famous story of Bret being told he was going to become world champ; he actually thought he was getting fired when Vince started talking to him. It's not as if the Bret run was so successful that it permanently changed the WWE mentality. Business remained bad until the rise of Steve Austin, and the Attitude Era was the exact opposite of fans "caring about match quality." That mentality remained the same throughout the 2000s, when Vince had the famous edict that anyone hired by developmental had to be 6'4" and 250 pounds. 

You know who changed that mentality though? Bryan, and to an extent CM Punk. Fans dragged Vince kicking and screaming into giving Bryan the main event at WM. In fact, since the rise of Bryan as a main eventer, we have basically, withvery few exceptions, have had workrate guys as champs. WWE became a workrate territory in the late 00s and 2010s, and once again, it was Punk and Bryan at the helm. I would also give Rey credit, but Rey always seemed like the exception to the rule to me. Since then, we have seen champs like Finn Balor, AJ Styles, Kevin Owens, etc, and I would argue that none of them would have sustained main event pushes had it not been for Bryan. 

As far as tag teams better than the Hart Foundation, I would rank the Bulldogs, Strikeforce, the Rockers, the Brainbusters and Demolition above them. If we stretch it a bit further, the LOD were also better. Hart Foundation are really overrated - they were perfectly good, but at no point were they great. 

[MoS]

2 hours ago, C.S. said:

P.S. Starting a thread centered around a question and then sniping at someone who gives you an answer you don't like or doesn't pick the same wrestler you did is considered very poor form.

lol please. You are far from the only person who has picked Bret here. You will notice I did not call anyone else's post ignorant. I thought your post was ignorant, and I said as much. I didn't "snipe" at you, I made an argument and backed it with examples and reasoning. I started the thread with a question, but my OP made it very clear what my opinion is. I am going to argue for my opinion, sorry. This is not a question where I need to know the correct answer. Sniping at someone is rolling your eyes at them btw. But in any case, I will say that I should not have said the part about "You picked Bret cuz you watched him as a kid" so I take that back and apologise for that. That was questioning your motive and that is poor form. I stand behind everything else I said though. 

[Ricky Jackson]

Surprised Bret's feud vs Owen seems to have been forgotten. It was his best imo. Austin a close second

[ohtani's jacket]

Bret and Shawn had a ladder match and a cage match, too, fwiw.

Their rivalry was about more than just their matches. They were like two All-Stars playing in different conferences. Each striving to be MVP, each checking the other guy's numbers trying to top them. 

I have to check this Wyatt match out because I honestly don't think I'd be a wrestling fan anymore if it wasn't for Bret vs. Diesel at Survivor Series '95.

[MoS]

9 minutes ago, Ricky Jackson said:

Surprised Bret's feud vs Owen seems to have been forgotten. It was his best imo. Austin a close second

I thought their first match was excellent. The cage match is one of the worst cage matches I have seen tbh. But yeah, fair point. 

 

7 minutes ago, ohtani's jacket said:

Bret and Shawn had a ladder match and a cage match, too, fwiw.

Their rivalry was about more than just their matches. They were like two All-Stars playing in different conferences. Each striving to be MVP, each checking the other guy's numbers trying to top them. 

I have to check this Wyatt match out because I honestly don't think I'd be a wrestling fan anymore if it wasn't for Bret vs. Diesel at Survivor Series '95.

I am completely blanking out on the cage match. When did this happen?

[C.S.]

15 minutes ago, Ricky Jackson said:

Surprised Bret's feud vs Owen seems to have been forgotten.

I'll respond to @MoS tomorrow because there's a lot to unpack there, including a new thread to read (and I had no idea threads could be embedded in posts), but I just wanted to jump in and say I cannot believe I forgot to mention this epic feud in one of my prior posts. It really is an all-time classic that had everything - great wrestling, great sports-entertaining, you name it.

[MoS]

Just now, C.S. said:

I'll respond to @MoS tomorrow because there's a lot to unpack there, including a new thread to read (and I had no idea threads could be embedded in posts), but I just wanted to jump in and say I cannot believe I forgot to mention this epic feud in one of my prior posts. It really is an all-time classic that had everything - great wrestling, great sports-entertaining, you name it.

I apologise for my tone and for calling your post ignorant. I cannot in good faith call someone's post ignorant while forgetting the Bret-Own feud, that was really stupid of me lol. I take that back