I’m not exactly handling the aftermath of Daniel Bryan’s official in-ring retirement well. I went and worked a night shift last night just so I didn’t have to watch his farewell speech on Raw, and it’ll probably be a few days before I can bring myself to watch it at all. Childishly, I’ve locked myself in this pocket dimension where it didn’t happen because I haven’t seen it. That’s not the way it works, I know.
But in the spirit of Bryan’s unrelenting positivity, I’ve been forcing myself to look back at the high points of his career. In case you’ve been asleep for the past 15 years or so, there have been a lot of bright spots. One of the undisputable truths about him is that he’s absolutely one of the toughest men to ever lace up a pair of boots, so I thought I’d take a look at a few moments when the American Dragon was just grittier than anybody else.
The Strong Style Savant
Beginning in 2002, Bryan became something of a fixed point in Japanese wrestling. Starting in Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling before working his way up to New Japan Pro Wrestling and Pro Wrestling Noah (which was then in a working relationship with Ring of Honor), he would cross paths with the likes of Hiroshi Tanahashi, Jushin “Thunder” Liger, and Shinsuke Nakamura on multiple occasions. He would also become fierce rivals with KENTA, the man we know today as Hideo Itami.
His most productive year in Japan was arguably 2004, when won the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team titles with Curry Man and unsuccessfully challenged for Tanahashi’s now-defunct U-30 Openweight Championship. His last non-WWE trip to Japan was in 2009 for Pro Wrestling Noah, as part of a summer tag team tournament with Roderick Strong.
Marathon Man
Daniel Bryan was one of the early cornerstones of Ring of Honor. He main-evented their very first show in February 2002 alongside Low Ki and Christopher Daniels, and for seven years he carried their banner. What’s interesting about his time in ROH is just how much of a stamina machine he was.
Using the most up-to-date information I could find, I went back and counted how many ROH matches he had that lasted 30 minutes or longer. The final total? A whopping 28 matches, including a 74-minute clash with Austin Aries in August 2004. Here’s an experiment: Think of anything in the world you would want to do for 74 minutes-straight. There’s not a lot, right?
Fighting Blind
On August 25, 2007, Bryan challenged Takeshi Morishima for the Ring of Honor World Heavyweight title. Morishima, known for his brawling, landed a strike on the side of Bryan’s head with enough force to detach his retina. Here’s how Bryan describes it in his autobiography:
“In the middle of the flurry, one blow caught me directly in the eye and I dropped. My cheek started swelling, and everything in my left eye was blurry. We wrestled another ten minutes after that, and I was still able to do things like the springboard flip dive into the crowd, but my eye was throbbing and it worried me. I had never experienced anything like it.”
Wrestling Observer Newsletter would go on to name the bout Match of the Year. As a matter of fact, Morishima eventually retired before Bryan did. Think about that the next time you try and call in sick to work.
Let’s Hope This Isn’t An Omen
How’s this for happenstance: The very first episode of WWE NXT aired on February 23, 2010… exactly eight years after Daniel Bryan main-evented Ring of Honor’s debut show. And once again, he was the main attraction, this time squaring off with World Heavyweight Champion Chris Jericho. He even tries to start the match with the Code of Honor! Old habits and all that, I suppose.
If you’re anything like me, you remember this match for Daniel Bryan’s rib-first suicide dive straight into a very unforgiving announcer’s table. But after nearly being blinded by a guy who was trained by Misawa himself, it probably felt like a scraped knee. If anything, go back and watch this match just to get an idea of the trajectory WWE has taken since then. In just six years, we went from Michael Cole putting the indies on blast to Triple H backstage at EVOLVE. The times, they are a-changin’.
Animal Instinct
Remember when D-Bry was obsessed with bears for some reason? I guess it was some kind of vision quest to prove that he was man enough to be a main-eventer, but whatever the reason, it resulted in two pinfall victories over bears. Actual, living bears, and certainly not Hornswoggle in a bear costume. Stu Hart wouldn’t face Hornswoggle in a bear costume. In fact, I think Bryan probably should have played the lead role in The Revenant.
Wrath of the Dragon
We’ve established that Bryan is a total badass who could probably wrestle a four-star match with an arm sawed off and both feet stapled to the mat, but what happens when the decision is out of his hands and he’s not allowed to finish? As it turns out, things can get out of control pretty fast. In June 2013, Bryan’s match with Randy Orton during an episode of Monday Night Raw was called off by doctors after he suffered a stinger. Enraged and indignant, he nearly got into a physical altercation with Triple H backstage. Once again, from his autobiography:
“Usually I don’t get superangry, and when I do it’s barely visible. This time, I was furious and I let everyone know it. When I walked through the curtain, I yelled, ‘What the f*ck is that all about?! That’s f*cking bullshit!’
…[Triple H and I] were up in each other’s faces and both ready to fight. I never had a match stopped in my entire career – not when I separated my shoulder five minutes into an hour draw and not when I detached my retina. Certainly not through any of my concussions… It felt hypocritical for Triple H – of all people – to do that, considering in 2001 Hunter himself tore his quad live on Raw and yet finished his match.”
Is it that kind of steadfast toughness that led to the premature end of his career? Who’s to say at this point, honestly? It’s a lot to think about, and it’s not like we can go back and change what happened. If anything, it adds to his mystique. He follows in the footsteps of Gene LeBell and Arn Anderson… men who wrestled bears.
