There’s a contingent of people who view Bryan Danielson’s decade plus tenure in WWE as a waste of time and something that keeps him from being viewed seriously as candidate for the greatest wrestler ever. And while I do think that sort of thinking is extremely narrow and puts unrealistic expectations as to what a Danielson with no WWE career would have looked like, I can sort of understand the sentiment.

The presentation of Bryan for his first year in WWE is very much about him being “boring”. It doesn’t help to have Michael Cole’s heel work being at its heights during this and Danielson taking the brunt of it. Once he wins the world title at the end of 2011, he turns into I think one of the most interesting on screen characters that WWE had during that entire decade with his heel work. But that devolves into him being an angry dwarf man and a buddy cop tag team with Kane as Team Hell No.

But despite the levels of success Danielson had already accomplished in WWE by this point, when we arrive at the end of 2012 and bleeding into 2013, something starts to feel different in the spring of that year. 

We don’t get to The Magic immediately in 2013, a lot of this time is still spent early on mucking it up with all the players of that era of the tag division (Team Rhodes Scholars, anyone?). But eventually we return to the good shit. All of Team Hell No and Friends’ encounters with The Shield had a tangible excitement in the air. And that part about excitement could be used when describing almost everything involving The Shield, but something about Bryan Danielson being involved in the mix created some of the most special atmospheres in this time of WWE.

By this point, Bryan Danielson has completely revamped himself into a hot tag and comeback master. His back flip out of the corner, duck the clothesline and flying elbow became an iconic babyface sequence. Some people will lament things like this, calling it repetitive or feeling frustration in having to watch someone like Danielson “dumb down” his work when they had seen him create lauded classics and masterpieces in Ring of Honor and other promotions. This disheveled goat man shaking furiously during his comebacks to some people felt like it was “beneath him”.

This is where fans with that perspective lose the plot. The merit to what someone finds more stylistically interesting or substantive won’t be discounted. But the lack of appreciation for the adaption needed for Bryan to become as hot as he did during this stretch is rooted in not understanding the difficulty of it. 

Bryan is 5’10, occupying a relative land of giants and pet projects and had the baffling rep of not being able to talk. EVERYTHING could have worked against success and for periods it did. But we all know that part and understand that story. What it doesn’t feel like is pointed out is how Bryan’s understanding of wrestling is what makes this all possible. He changes almost everything to become not only the most digestible version of Bryan Danielson, but the most electric as well. It’d be remiss not to mention the role the “YES” and “NO” chants getting so insanely over had in Danielson’s rise, but it doesn’t work if he’s not giving people to something to latch onto when the bell rings too. Steve Austin didn’t become Stone Cold just because he said “And that’s the bottom line”. All the catchphrases and chants have a ceiling if the wrestling doesn’t keep people there, and Daniel Bryan found that sweet spot

2013 WWE is viewed as one of the best years ever for the company from an onscreen product perspective and a massive share of that goes along with what Danielson was doing on a week in, week out basis. For how incredible and must see everything involving Danielson and The Shield was, his work with Randy Orton all year felt just as special. And in that work with Randy we got to see Danielson have the elements of nastiness and grittiness that became synonymous with who he was as a performer in the 00’s, meld damn near perfectly with the wild babyface with reckless abandon that he grew to be (if you want to be mean about it, you could say Danielson here is just a dumbed down version of himself in the Morishima feud). The growing tension and animosity between Orton and Danielson as frustration mounted with not being able to best The Shield spawned into matches in June of that year that only made the already molten Danielson even hotter and led to a discovery of maybe Orton being an all-time Bryan opponent. 

Every episode of RAW or Smackdown he was on felt like appointment viewing, Money in the Bank and SummerSlam of that year made a 16 year old Quentin beg his parents to buy the PPVs and that he would pay them back. The evidence might not be there in terms of TV ratings and PPV buyrates, but genuinely, 2013-2014 Danielson is maybe the single hottest major American babyface I’ve witnessed with my own eyes in the sense of the onscreen reaction. I’m too young to have really experienced the heights of The Rock and Steve Austin. Guys like Batista, Rey Mysterio and Jeff Hardy come close (Jeff probably comes the closest), but nothing felt quite as special as Danielson. Something like the gauntlet match against Ryback, Jack Swagger and Cesaro from the 7/22/13 RAW episode is something I probably won’t ever forget experiencing in that moment.

This article really isn’t about retelling the story about how improbable the rise of Daniel Bryan was. Everyone gets that it’s a happy coincidence that fell in WWE’s lap and despite that they still did their best to fight it tooth and nail. It’s historically significant from that perspective alone. But this run shouldn’t only be discussed from the standpoint of how “over” he was and the misgivings of WWE to ignore what was right in front of them. It should be a point used as to why Danielson is maybe the greatest wrestler of all time.

In my eyes, the “best wrestler” title goes beyond who has the “most great matches”. That’s a boring way of approaching things and doesn’t really give the analysis that a topic like that deserves. It’s part of why I have a difficult time getting myself to a point where I consider any of the All Japan Four Pillars of Heaven to be serious number 1 contenders.

Being able to adapt to the environments you’re placed in and thriving in multiple different settings. Showing a versatility that allows you to work any of the required roles in a wrestling match seamlessly. Fulfilling any of the expectations for placement on the card. Having an ability to work with a wide range of opponents and either being able to force greatness out of them or to have the wherewithal to work around their limitations and get the best possible result. There’s so many things that are important to me in the scope of evaluating the greatest and that’s only some of the things I consider. And I’m the same way whether it be about mangakas, musicians, etc. 

Bryan Danielson already proved many times over that he can have the “great” match. He also already proved that he could be overly ambitious in wanting to achieve that as well. That’s why Danielson in WWE is a testament to growth and maturing as a wrestler. Because as much as we love the attention the detail we can get from Bryan, there’s something be said about stripping away that density and focusing on the meat and potatoes; selling and babyface fire.

Is there a world where Bryan Danielson had more “great matches” from 2010-2021 if he wasn’t in WWE? I mean, I guess? We could have had him sticking around on the US indies and seeing guys like Steen and Generico at the peak of their powers. Maybe seeing him face some of the best rising talent of the early 2010s like ACH and Trevor Lee. Being a guy to lead the way for the grappling heavy guys and mixing it up with Timothy Thatcher, Jonathan Gresham or Biff Busick. More time in wXw and tangling with a more fully formed version of WALTER or Axel Tischer and just hanging around the eventual European wrestling boom. But by that point there’s a huge risk to Danielson becoming stale as an indie act, which is a thing people already felt about by the time he signed.

What about Japan and he takes a voyage to become a full time guy in a Japanese promotion? He already had New Japan history so that door was probably still open, but realistically he’s a career junior there for many years if that’s the route he went, the same probably applies to any AJPW aspirations. NOAH maybe had more potential mobility as a main event act, but we all know the sinking ship 2010s NOAH was. Danielson probably wouldn’t have seriously considered a DDT or a Dragongate for a home.

Mexico at that time might not have been the most realistic option either, no matter what path he chose in terms of promotions, even if there’s tons of stuff that could have potentially been fantastic. CMLL, AAA, IWRG or whatever sort of possible indie path would have been difficult to find footing in. 

And obviously no one in the world wanted him to go to TNA/Impact.

Maybe there is a scenario where Bryan continued to become a world traveler and worked with all the non-WWE signed greats of the decade (HARASHIMA vs Danielson, I’m looking at you), but Bryan went where he needed to go and what made the most sense. And in turn, he showed that no matter how long it’ll take, no matter how much it’s fought against, he would thrive anywhere you put him. He mastered the WWE TV format and took it to levels we might not ever see again. The true all time greats know how to adjust and remain just as effective and 2013 was Bryan’s masterpiece in that regard.