Daniel Bryan has had a lot of great matches in his career, in front of a lot of different audiences and in a lot of different styles – picking the top 15 best Daniel Bryan matches is a practically impossible task. Well, good news, we don’t have to, because D-Bry himself recently picked his top 15 greatest matches for an article on WWE.com. There seems to be a little bit of political butt-covering going on with the choices, as the list is pretty heavily dominated by WWE matches, but it’s not all WWE, and the #1 choice will probably be a surprise. Here’s the list along with a few scattered comments by Bryan…
15. John Cena vs. Daniel Bryan — WWE Championship Match (SummerSlam 2013)
14. Daniel Bryan vs. Randy Orton — WWE App Vote Street Fight (Raw; June 24, 2013)
“One of my favorite matches as far as my career advancement was wrestling Randy Orton on Raw. A couple weeks before I was wrestling Randy and the match got stopped because I had a stinger. It was very frustrating and I thought, ‘Oh, come on.’ But it ended up being one of the springboards that led me into the match with John Cena at SummerSlam.”
13. CM Punk vs. Daniel Bryan — WWE Championship Match (Over the Limit 2012)
12. Daniel Bryan vs. Takeshi Morishima — Fight Without Honor (Ring of Honor Final Battle 2008)
“This is where you’re going to start hearing the word ‘aggregate.’ I’m picking this match, but it’s really an aggregate of matches I had against Morishima. The match at Final Battle 2008 was nearly a year and a half in the making. It’s called a Fight Without Honor in Ring of Honor, which was essentially our Street Fight. It’s something I was very proud of because we were the main event of that show in New York City and we sold out the Manhattan Center of 2,500 people without any television, because that was before Ring of Honor had TV. That, to me, was really cool and special and shows just how into the product the fans were at the time.”
11. Daniel Bryan vs. Seth Rollins – WWE App Vote Match (Raw; June 10, 2013)
10. Daniel Bryan vs. Cesaro (Raw, July 22, 2013)
9. Daniel Bryan vs. Nigel McGuinness (Ring of Honor Unified 2006)
“Again, I picked this one, but there was a whole slew of matches with Nigel that I could have picked. This one in particular was memorable because we were in England. Nigel is English, and the crowd was just going crazy for him. They hated me. He was bleeding, the emotion was running high. It was a really cool match.”
8. Daniel Bryan vs. KENTA (Ring of Honor Glory By Honor 2006)
“I’d just separated my shoulder and torn a couple of tendons maybe three weeks before going into the Manhattan Center again in New York City. The emotion was very, very high, everybody knew I was hurt, and KENTA kept kicking the crap out of my arm. My sister was in the crowd and she actually cried. I consider wrestling art. You want people to be entertained. If you can, make ‘em laugh, but when you really get ‘em, you make ‘em cry. And that was one of those matches that was able to do that.”
7. Daniel Bryan vs. William Regal (‘WWE Superstars’, November 11, 2011)
6. Team Hell No & Ryback vs. The Shield — Tables, Ladders & Chairs Match (WWE TLC 2012)
5. Team Hell No & The Undertaker vs. The Shield (Raw, April 22, 2013)
4. Sheamus vs. Daniel Bryan — 2-out-of-3 Falls World Heavyweight Championship Match (Extreme Rules 2012)
“We both felt really screwed at WrestleMania XXVIII. This was our chance to go out and just show them what we could have done. It was a really fun 2-out-of-3 Falls Match. It was really good.”
3. Daniel Bryan vs. Triple H (WrestleMania 30)
2. Randy Orton vs. Daniel Bryan vs. Batista — Triple Threat WWE World Heavyweight Championship Match (WrestleMania 30)
1. Robbie Brookside vs. Daniel Bryan — EWP Intercontinental Championship Match (EWP Gilde Wrestling Festival 2003 — Tag 3)
“A match that nobody will ever be able to see but was one of my favorite matches I’ve ever done was against Robbie Brookside, who’s a trainer now down in NXT, in 2003 in Germany.They do rounds systems [in Germany], so we went out there and I want to say it was a match that was 10 rounds. It was just one of those things where Robbie Brookside helped train me, he helped me be the wrestler that I am today. It’s also one of those moments where people don’t think you can do it, and then you come in and the promoter is like, ‘Holy cow, he is what you said he was.’ And that was really cool.”
Certainly an interesting list and perspective on Bryan’s career from the man himself. I’m guessing most of you probably wouldn’t rank a match nobody has seen at number one, so what are your top Daniel Bryan matches? Let’s get this ranking party started.
via WWE
