What is Bryan Danielson’s biggest weakness?

Readers of this site may come to differing conclusions, but among the more critical and tenured fans out there, the most hotly debated topic is match length. As covered in Violent People co-founder and overall stud Tanner’s 2006 article Dragon by The Numbers, Bryan Danielson likes to go long. This is particularly an argument stemming from Bryan’s Ring of Honor world title run, where he’d regularly go 25+ minutes every outing, as was the trend in a post Joe vs Punk Ring of Honor, through 2004-2006 before calming down in 2007 (with few notable exceptions, there’s an alternate version of this article that’s about the Guerre Sans Frontieres Chris Hero match from this very year). 

It’s not totally without merit. While I think that the floor for a lot of these matches are higher than they’re retroactively made out to be, most of them being “great matches with fat on them” vs outright slogs and that the elongated time is more often than not time well spent even during the worst of these matches (Revolution 2023), there’s this perception that Bryan Danielson hung up his prestige wrestling boots and finally learned how to work with some brevity in the WWE. In a more complete thought, an “epics” guy who was untested outside of that arena. 

That’s simply not true. 

Bryan Danielson pre-WWE rarely got the chance to work outside of the (mostly) prestige wrestling umbrella ROH provided. In 2009, he took a booking with CHIKARA for that year’s King of the Trios. He proceeded to deliver one of the most complete, honest, and best tournament performances ever.

Team Uppercut (Bryan Danielson, Claudio Castagnoli, & Dave Taylor) vs Eddie Kingston, Brodie Lee, & Grizzly Redwood

For the uninitiated, CHIKARA was a less serious place for wrestling. Filled with comedy spots, breezy Lucharesu inspired tags, and due to the control freak of an owner, a restrained amount of big singles epics. “Bloodless, family friendly pro wrestling” has garnered an ugly reputation over the past 2 decades, but CHIKARA at its peak was probably the best wrestling can be within those parameters. It gives ultra serious, Real Wrestler Bryan Danielson, coming off a long and bloody series with Takeshi Morishima, room to goof off. He makes his entrance grinning like the edibles are kicking in and “stooging” for Grizzly Redwood, seemingly just to annoy Eddie Kingston. 

Bryan’s relationship with Eddie in this match is a real sticking point. Their actual in ring time is fairly limited, but Eddie Kingston is visibly insecure about Bryan getting the BITW treatment here and gives us one of the great “trash talking from the apron” performances ever. A lovely detail is that Bryan, despite being welcomed as the babyface, is still able to antagonize Eddie Kingston in a real playful sort of way. Often serious wrestlers who try comedy do so by breaking character and doing something against their nature, while Bryan demonstrates an ability to tap into a side of what was already there and recontextualize it like he will in 2019 with the famous planet’s champion character.

Bryan doesn’t forget to give back. Brodie Lee is the first person to give him real problems and opens him up for a revenge shot from Grizzly Redwood that takes out Bryan’s knee, a narrative thread we’ll pick up later, and actually leaves them with their shine without taking a revenge shot back after his (great) FIP segment. There are a lot of great performances in this match. You can maybe even argue Eddie Kingston’s is a little more captivating, but it’s Bryan’s that is most admirable. Leaving everyone with something and fitting into a very different environment without really changing anything. A wonderful time.

Team Uppercut (Bryan Danielson, Claudio Castagnoli, & Dave Taylor) vs Mike Quackenbush, Johnny Saint, & Skyade

Despite this being the match of the tournament and one of the best matches of the 2000s, it’s probably the match where I have the least to say about Bryan in particular. This is out and out wrestled like a dream match that Bryan is on the passive side of. He spends his first few interactions working World Of Sport spots, but it’s a real joy to see Bryan so enthused at working a Johnny Saint who is pushing 70 here. This sort of excitement behind every bit of grappling is the real magic here, even if it means Bryan has to take a backseat for the first half and let the old men and Quackenbush cook.

Mike Quackenbush kicks off Bryan Danielson’s main contribution right before this match gets too cute with a real disrespectful stomp to Bryan’s bad knee in the last 10 minutes that flips a switch in Bryan to stop having fun and start trying to win. He gets real nasty with Quack, throwing a particularly heavy barrage of elbows Quack’s way and even more shockingly, gets real mean with poor Skyade. 

The finishing stretch of this is mainly a real incredible Quack/Claudio run, but for us it’s more notably the second time Bryan, after having someone go to the leg, benches himself for the rest of the match. It’s an interesting little touch of realism in a match like this. Dream matches usually fail because they rely on complacent ideas and the aggression that Bryan passes to his teammates after that switch flips is the perfect escalation for a back and forth grappling match. A fantastic circus of different styles of grappling that knows exactly when to explode.

The semi final and final matches of the KOT 2009

I’ve decided to combine the last two Team Uppercut matches, as they’re both the pay off to the underpinning narrative of our 2 matches up to this point and are directly connected.

Vs The UnStable 

For the unfamiliar, The UnStable is a loser stable. Not as in they eat a lot of pins, they’re just not the toughest fighters in the company. They’re straight heels and they try and fail to jump start this before getting royally beaten and stretched out by Team Uppercut. That’d probably be it for them if it wasn’t for Bryan’s bad knee and luckily, they catch him cold and have the best wrestler in the world in their corner. 

This is the best Bryan Danielson performance of the weekend and a personal favorite of mine.

Bryan Danielson is so angry that they’re targeting the leg. The first time was at least a targeted attack that created the injury. Outside of the one moment of Quackenbush pettiness, there was no attack on the extended injured leg. The UnStable have Bryan Danielson scouted and Bryan, rather than play to the crowd like Ricky Morton or hot dog like Hulk Hogan, takes every opportunity to claw at faces, to reach out and grab nostrils, to throw close elbows. Every little flash of offense is nasty, angry, and desperate. Bryan Danielson once again needs Claudio & Taylor to bail him out and they do successfully, but when Bryan tries to get his revenge instead of sitting on the proverbial bench, Vin Gerard puts him in an STF he needs to be saved from.  

Vs F.I.S.T.

What do the Chuck Taylor led group FIST follow up with in the final? What grand plan do they come up with?

They reupholster The UnStable’s strategy beat for beat and devastatingly, it works and they nearly shut Team Uppercut out.

It plays out masterfully. Team FIST jump Team Uppercut  from behind instead of from the front and go to work on Bryan’s leg in a much cheaper way. Bryan, no longer having the strength to fight, clearly is hobbled and sets all energy towards being bailed out. FIST is unbelievably cheap and nasty here. They work over Bryan’s knee in grosser ways, making sure to sprinkle in the signature Bryan La Tapatia and grounded elbows that we hadn’t seen so far from him. When Bryan finally gets out and Taylor & Claudio lay the bombs in and go for the moves they won with earlier (Dave Taylor’s butterfly suplex trap pin being broken up and Claudio’s Ricola bomb resulting in FIST pulling the referee out of the ring before the three count), they’re foiled by the numbers game because Bryan can’t be there to counteract them. Bryan has one more comeback in him and heartbreakingly, after three matches of not being able to be there, Bryan just can’t clutch up with a leg in as bad of a condition as it is.

It’s not one of the best tournament performances of all time because of the match to match selling. It’s not because of raw match quality, it’s likely you could find better G1 runs out there. It’s one of the best ever because of what Bryan was able to accomplish and give back. Bryan Danielson enters a company as a special guest draw and makes every single person he runs into look capable against a world class caliber opponent, by hook or by crook, without ever looking weak. It is not only a sneaky and ideal political performance, but it is perfect structurally too. The narrative with the injured leg starts as just a simple target for an air tight heat segments, becomes the flint for the explosion in the all star grapplers match, and is then lasered in on by the two scummiest teams in CHIKARA with the 2nd team whose low enough to go to the leg not even creating the blueprint in one of the most tainted victories of the decade. Bryan Danielson’s performance in this tournament is not just the same great performance through every match, it is varied in tone, attitude, and narrative each time out. The best player in the league getting hurt, gutting it out, and going out on his shield. A magical, somehow previously under discussed opus. 

Bryan Danielson is the king of the trios and if he is going to be in the GOAT discussion, this should be tethered to the conversation as one of his greatest achievements. Put this gem on the motherfucking crown.