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

[ohtani's jacket]

Well, there you go.

 

[MoS]

3 minutes ago, ohtani's jacket said:

Well, there you go.

 

On that note, it would be remiss of me if I didn't share this meme - 

Both Bret and Bryan >>> Shawn. I doubt that statement would lead to nearly as much discussion and debate as this thread's question has produced

[ohtani's jacket]

I do want to say that crediting Bryan and CM Punk for turning WWE into a workrate territory where smaller guys can be champ dismisses the progress that Benoit, Guerrero, Jericho, Mysterio Jr., Angle, etc. made during the previous decade. Heck, even Shawn played in his part during that era. Workrate began to improve when the WCW guys jumped. 

[MoS]

45 minutes ago, ohtani's jacket said:

I do want to say that crediting Bryan and CM Punk for turning WWE into a workrate territory where smaller guys can be champ dismisses the progress that Benoit, Guerrero, Jericho, Mysterio Jr., Angle, etc. made during the previous decade. Heck, even Shawn played in his part during that era. Workrate began to improve when the WCW guys jumped. 

I have talked about Rey before. Angle isn't really a trailblazer, both because his olympic gold medal status created an exception that proved a rule, and because he was a main eventer in his own right for a very short time, and was disposed of with basically no change in overall mentality. 

As far as the others, Eddy and Benoit received "thank you" reigns that basically amounted to nothing. I don't think Jericho received even that. I do think the struggle over Bryan's main event push and presence remains an epoch-marking, transcendental change in WWE and wrestling philosophy, both for good and for bad. It is something that becomes evident imo when you look at week-to-week booking and the larger implications, which led to a substantive change in WWE main event philosophy, and the evolution of WWE main event wrestling style, which I have tried to explain in my previous posts in the thread.

That said, I think you are right and raise a very valid point about the WWF house style beginning to change when the WCW talent influx happened in 2000.

 

[ohtani's jacket]

The likes of Eddie, Rey, Benoit and Jericho all went through the same struggles that Bryan did getting over the hump in WWF. I don't think Bryan would have made it without those guys before him, and the likes of Bret and Michaels before them. I'm pretty sure the only guy Vince ever wanted to push out of the lot of them was Shawn because he was Vince's sexy boy.

[Brian Elliott]

Bryan's in-ring peak was the mid-to-late 2000s, and although there've been big high points since then, he hasn't consistently come close to his best work. 

[Brian Elliott]

On 1/1/2021 at 9:47 AM, sek69 said:

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. 

Not even close to the same level of patterning, especially since Flair always TOOK the same offence - a key difference. 

[Brian Elliott]

On 1/2/2021 at 12:52 AM, 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. 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." 

At house shows, Bret cared about having logical matches, not great matches. 

[Kadaveri]

6 hours ago, ohtani's jacket said:

I do want to say that crediting Bryan and CM Punk for turning WWE into a workrate territory where smaller guys can be champ dismisses the progress that Benoit, Guerrero, Jericho, Mysterio Jr., Angle, etc. made during the previous decade. Heck, even Shawn played in his part during that era. Workrate began to improve when the WCW guys jumped. 

Bryan/Punk's influence isn't really about them being smaller workrate guys (and Punk isn't even that small), it's that they came from the indies to being WWE main-eventers when WWE didn't see indies as a place where stars could ever come from. Being a pushed act on WCW TV for years is a much easier sell.

[Makai Club #1]

2 hours ago, Brian Elliott said:

At house shows, Bret cared about having logical matches, not great matches. 

From what I could tell, that's pretty much the same thing to Bret. 

[Dav'oh]

On 1/1/2021 at 8:57 PM, Laz said:

whereas Bryan was one of many individuals in a talent-heavy scene...there were so many other people who could have taken attention away from him and yet none ever really did.

Bryan's comedy helped a ton, I'd reckon. From his theme music to Mr. Small Package and whatever else he was pulling.  Then "Yes! Yes! Yes!" to "No! No! No!" to duelling "Yes! No!" to Team Hell No. It's a miracle he ever got out of the comedy gigs, really. 

Bret didn't have the, not luxury, of that, he never had the opportunity for that but I can't see him having Bryan's talents if he had been called upon to do comedy. It means Bret had only his work to get over with. He couldn't use laughter to reinforce positive neural pathways connected to our facial-recognition systems, just what he did between the ropes and the (serious) character he worked so hard to project and protect.

Bryan shouldn't be marked down for having comedy amongst the many strings to his bow, of course. But I don't think Bret should lose points for never needing to be a comedy character either (not that anyone has mentioned comedy in this thread, I know).

*Masked Gladiator (white brindle 2yo) saluted in the 8th at Cannington tonight at 17/1 

[C.S.]

13 hours ago, Laz said:

Indies weren't a thing outside of some washed up has-beens and never-weres during Bret's peak, nor was he ever in a position where he wasn't granted access to a larger audience. His father was the top promoter in Canada, one whose connections to Vince Sr. got his sons a look when Vince Jr. was making his national expansion and needed talent. I won't say Bret was handed anything, but he damn sure wasn't living out of his car and risking life and limb every weekend just to get gas money. 

I mean, this is a pretty flimsy argument. I could easily say, well, Bryan was trained by Shawn Michaels, so he instantly had a spotlight on him and was able to parlay that into opportunities other struggling indie wrestlers could never fathom. See how silly that sounds? Except, it's kinda true. Shawn did use his influence to get his guys spots. Lance Cade, as a bigger guy, had the most immediate success and got to WWE first. Brian Kendrick made it there eventually. We all know about Bryan. (I feel like I'm forgetting someone.) Of course, Bryan's incredible work also became his calling card - I was hearing about "The American Dragon" a full decade or more before he got to the WWE, and even before he got to ROH - and he deserves full credit for that.

13 hours ago, Laz said:

Bryan wins again for his direct influence on how the very business has been run for the past decade.

But does he? I would argue, very strongly, that "the indie influence" is largely overblown during Bryan's run. If we're talking Trips and NXT now, yes, you have a point. But Bryan's WWE rise was a few years before that. Do you think Vince ever watched an indie match in his life? Please! It all goes back to Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels, not ROH. Without Bret and HBK showing Vince that "smaller" wrestlers could be credible champions, there's no Bryan. So, what it boils down to is that Daniel Bryan has Bret Hart and his own trainer Shawn Michaels to (indirectly) thank for his WWE success.

[ohtani's jacket]

7 hours ago, Kadaveri said:

Bryan/Punk's influence isn't really about them being smaller workrate guys (and Punk isn't even that small), it's that they came from the indies to being WWE main-eventers when WWE didn't see indies as a place where stars could ever come from. Being a pushed act on WCW TV for years is a much easier sell.

Let's not pretend they were all conquering indy heroes. They were both sent to development and Bryan was cut twice. 

[Coffey]

On 1/1/2021 at 11:42 PM, MoS said:

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. 

I'll give you The Rockers, they were great. The Brainbusters weren't together that long in WWF before Tully got popped for coke. Strikeforce were definitely two talented individuals but I don't remember their tag stuff as much as their break-up. It was a bit before my time, so I can't really comment there. Demolition were a Road Warriors rip-off during the twilight of Eadie's career where he could barely even move. The Road Warriors themselves, when they came to WWF, were just doing squash matches, that stupid shit with the Rocco doll that they made Ellering carry around & their best days, like Eadie, were behind them. 

I don't think Neidhart was some super worker or anything either but honestly, it just sounds like you have disdain for Bret.

[MoS]

13 minutes ago, Coffey said:

I don't think Neidhart was some super worker or anything either but honestly, it just sounds like you have disdain for Bret.

I really don't, which is what I tried to clarify in my subsequent comments here. I do however think that the Hart Foundation is really overrated. I think Bret hadn't really found himself or his character during the 80s and therefore HF matches were bland and whatever personality was exhibited was by Neidhart, who is pretty one-note.

Once Bret found his voice in the early '90s, his game went up several notches. 

[MoS]

1 hour ago, ohtani's jacket said:

Let's not pretend they were all conquering indy heroes. They were both sent to development and Bryan was cut twice. 

Come on. Development then was hardly what it is now, and the 2nd cut was purely due to PR reasons. As soon as there was enough space and distance, he was brought back... literally as a conquering hero.

[MoS]

I'll give Bret this though: from 1984 to 1997, he improved every single year, which is a really long time to be constantly getting better. I don't think Bryan can claim the same over a similar time period

[joeg]

4 hours ago, MoS said:

I'll give Bret this though: from 1984 to 1997, he improved every single year, which is a really long time to be constantly getting better. I don't think Bryan can claim the same over a similar time period

I will whole heartedly disagree. You could see Bryan make incremental improvements throughout his career. In 99 you can see the impact his first tour of Japan had. In 01, you can see the development of his in ring psychology and how his work became snugger, more realistic looking after spending 6 months in developmental with Regal. By this point he's a young prodigy but by far a finished product. From 02 to 04, his strikes and selling become even more realistic and his style borders quasi shoot style in terms of realism as he works a dozen tours of Inoki-ism era New Japan upstart ROH. He's now reached the level of like a Dean Malenko or Benoit. In 03 and 04, he tours Europe extensively and really learns to get heat and work as a heel.  By 05 ish he starts to put it together and show personality in ring and has a great run as heel champ in ROH and PWG. From 07 to 10, he works NOAH and on top in ROH, working 30 minutes plus 150 nights a year, and gets really good at working epics. In 2010, he goes to WWE, and for the first time in his career works sub ten minute multicam tv matches  and quickly becomes the best in the company at that. In 2012, he's paired with Kane and for the first time in his career is doing stupid oddball comedy sketches. He quickly becomes the best in the company at this while also cutting great promos and showing personality in and out of the ring. He's now the total package, he's Eddy not Benoit or Malenko at this point. He can do it all. In 2013, he's the top babyface in the company and proceeds to have the most successful, most memorable title chases of the last 20 years. In 2018 he returns after 3 years off and makes the wise move to turn heel (WWE can't book babyfaces to save their life). His heel title run had some of the best heel promos and some of the best in ring work of the last decade. Every year, every run, every new territory, he added something new, expanded his game, became a much more well rounded and versatile.  

[PhilTLL]

12 hours ago, Dav'oh said:

Bryan's comedy helped a ton, I'd reckon. 

Hey now, I would put "Jam-Up Guy" Bret against any comedy act in wrestling.

[MoS]

I added a poll, something I had meant to do a day back or so. I am not a big fan of polls because I find people just vote and do not actually discuss and flesh out their opinions/arguments, but I would be curious to see what the general PWO consensus is, whether I am an outlier here.

[ohtani's jacket]

11 hours ago, MoS said:

I really don't, which is what I tried to clarify in my subsequent comments here. I do however think that the Hart Foundation is really overrated. I think Bret hadn't really found himself or his character during the 80s and therefore HF matches were bland and whatever personality was exhibited was by Neidhart, who is pretty one-note.

Once Bret found his voice in the early '90s, his game went up several notches. 

The Hitman character clearly grew stronger during Bret's singles push, but most of the guys who were packaged together in tag teams showed limited personality. It wasn't until they broke out, or turned on their partner, that they began to develop their character. The Hart Foundation gimmick was decent enough. They needed a mouthpiece in Jimmy Hart, but they could work face or heel, and folks knew what they were all about. I was a fan of the Hart Foundation as a kid, and I remember being excited that the Hitman got a singles push when I rediscovered wrestling in the mid-90s. I think the turning point for Bret was when he started having more singles matches in 1989. 

One advantage Bret has over Bryan is that great matches were few are far apart when Bret was active. They were the exception not the rule. The fact that there were less pay-per-views made the great matches stand out even more, as well as the fact that the TV rarely featured competitive matches. Bret's best matches became part of WWF folklore. Bryan's work may be better than Bret, but how many matches has he had in the WWF that are as legendary as Bret's? 

I can't shake the feeling that Bret's great matches are more organic than Bryan's. I could be way off, but Bryan always feels like he's drawing on other people's work. There's nothing wrong with shaping your influences into a great match, but it seems like something he's consciously doing while a lot of Bret's matches feel like there was something in the water that day and the match turned out great. 

[Coffey]

On 1/3/2021 at 6:42 PM, MoS said:

I really don't, which is what I tried to clarify in my subsequent comments here. I do however think that the Hart Foundation is really overrated.

This is fair.

I will say, that as much as The Hart Foundation may be overrated to some, the Headshrinkers are super underrated to me. I would put them in that top list ahead of some of those teams. I'm also pretty high on The Nasty Boys but feel that may be a more minority opinion there. 

I do think that Bret's tag stuff is more of a positive for his case than a negative though, for sure.

[Laz]

On 1/3/2021 at 2:04 PM, C.S. said:

I mean, this is a pretty flimsy argument. I could easily say, well, Bryan was trained by Shawn Michaels, so he instantly had a spotlight on him and was able to parlay that into opportunities other struggling indie wrestlers could never fathom. See how silly that sounds? Except, it's kinda true. Shawn did use his influence to get his guys spots. Lance Cade, as a bigger guy, had the most immediate success and got to WWE first. Brian Kendrick made it there eventually. We all know about Bryan. (I feel like I'm forgetting someone.) 

Only Shawn wasn't able to pull enough strings to get Bryan a full-time gig, and Bryan was cut from developmental in 2001. Even with HBK having Vince's ear on who to look at from the TWA? HBK wasn't the top promoter of a country like Stu was, and Vince didn't owe him any favors. Bryan didn't have the safety net that Bret did, which was the obvious point being made.

The other party you're thinking of is Paul London.

On 1/3/2021 at 2:04 PM, C.S. said:

I would argue, very strongly, that "the indie influence" is largely overblown during Bryan's run. If we're talking Trips and NXT now, yes, you have a point. But Bryan's WWE rise was a few years before that. Do you think Vince ever watched an indie match in his life? Please! It all goes back to Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels, not ROH. Without Bret and HBK showing Vince that "smaller" wrestlers could be credible champions, there's no Bryan. So, what it boils down to is that Daniel Bryan has Bret Hart and his own trainer Shawn Michaels to (indirectly) thank for his WWE success.

I'm not talking Trips wanting to hire indie guys left, right, and center. I'm talking Trips even having a huge indie scene to pick from. Bryan was so integral to that happening, to the shift from indies being nothing but "cheap outlaw mud shows" (TM Cornette) to the territories of the internet age. There were a metric shitton of other factors and talents, of course, but the big indies pre-ROH were either deathmatch focused (CZW, IWA-MS) or copies of what you'd see on Monday night (UPW), and I remember one of the major drawing points in early ROH was seeing Bryan/LowKi/Daniels, Bryan/LowKi (still a 5* classic), and the Bryan/Williams series.

Bret (and Shawn) may have proven to Vince that guys didn't need to be roidy magoos or giants to headline his shows, but Bryan was the brightest star in a scene that was so integral to the survival and evolution of the entire business that Vince was forced to take notice. 

[flyonthewall2983]

Bret and Jim had way better matches as heels. Classic MSG matches with the Bulldogs, Killer Bees and Rougeaus (who I think were better as faces, but I've heard great stuff about their matches with Shawn and Marty). When they turned face, those levels of matches were fewer and far between, and it was clear that at a few stages they were really testing the waters with Bret as a singles guy, giving him matches with Perfect as early as 89 and Shawn the following year.