When asked if I wanted to contribute something to this, after instinctively agreeing, I was at a little bit of a loss for a while. 

In celebration of the career of one of the greatest wrestlers of all time, WET HOT AMERICAN DRAGON SUMMER, many great writers have written about their favorite aspects and/or general highlights or moments of interest in the career of Bryan Danielson. By this point, you’ve read about things like those ultra important turn of the century tournaments, his 2004 in IWA Mid-South, the prestige style ROH World Title run, Nigel McGuinness, Takeshi Morishima, the King of Trios, his summer 2010 sojourn across the independents, his success as the greatest WWE babyface of a generation, and so forth. 

What interests me about these kinds of discussions at this point, for someone so celebrated for so long, is less the highlights and, far more so, the stuff around them. Weirder things, smaller shows, less obviously great work, and generally, the work that doesn’t always make a consensus Best Of. That’s the kind of stuff that, I think, tells you as much, if not more, about somebody than the moments in which every piece of spotlight was given to them. More than the prestige epics and matches designed to be Great Matches, the things that happen in quieter moments or on less important shows are what’s always stuck with me about a guy like Bryan Danielson. 

He’s a guy who does everything, and more importantly, who tries everything, and more often than not when something is up to him, refuses to be uninteresting.  

That’s why, in the spirit of the experimentation and fun that Bryan so often put into his own work, I wanted to just throw some stuff out there that not everyone may have seen, or that I just like and/or admire a whole lot, and talk about various other works of the Dragon.

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BRYAN DANIELSON VS. HOMICIDE, ROH REBORN: STAGE TWO (4/24/2004)

Something I don’t think Bryan gets nearly enough credit for, even in a clear great match half an hour classic like this, is what he can do as a control group, as seen here in arguably the most underrated “golden age” Ring of Honor match ever. 

A day after a turn to the dark side, this is all about who and what Homicide is now, and in effect, defining that new chaotic and frantic and mentally disorganized approach by way of a comparison to the ultra steady American Dragon. That isn’t to say this is a match entirely about that, being a classic ROH double limb attack match with a lot to offer on both sides, each showing Danielson at his traditional best on both sides (oddly, I especially appreciated his attack on the hand), but that years before he ever got credit for things like this, Bryan was not only capable of blending high level mechanical and character work, but giving the world one of the great examples of it this century. It’s a line walked so carefully and yet so effectively, offering up one of the greatest performances of his career, while also keeping everything in perfect order and the focus completely off of him. 

This isn’t a match about Bryan Danielson, but with virtually anyone else in his place, it doesn’t work nearly as well as it does. 

BRYAN DANIELSON VS. CM PUNK, FIP BRING THE PAIN (3/26/2005)

Lost underneath their character-driven ROH matches and the joyous success over seemingly the entire world around them in the WWE, there’s a gem like this to be found. Down in Ring of Honor’s little (little little little) brother promotion in Florida, notorious for lower attendances around this point, Punk and Bryan go forty-one minutes to try and pump some blood into the DVD sales, and although it never isn’t a clear marketing ploy, they’re just great enough that it doesn’t matter. There’s a respect for time here early on that most wrestlers never learn, and although it’s never necessary, it’s also equally impressive, and rarely wasteful.  

The love of the game does not always result in the greatest wrestling, but in hands like these, doing it just to do it has rarely felt as virtuous as it does here.

BRYAN DANIELSON VS. FUJITA JR. HAYATO, UWAI STATION (12/3/2006)

On that note, “fuck it, why not” personified. 

In the country for his first NOAH tour, on one good shoulder and a day off of a rematch with KENTA, Bryan Danielson shows up to the inaugural UWAI STATION and wrestles some little weirdo for ten minutes. Danielson, again, offers up something a little different, trying out some fancy and novel new tricks on the ground, while also doing a whole lot for a promising Fujita Hayato who had under forty matches under his belt at the time. Danielson elevating someone isn’t all that novel, a claim to fame being how many wrestlers have their best match against him, nor is such a thing happening in Japan, but the circumstances make this as interesting as it is impressive. 

The match isn’t the greatest, the fit is not perfect, but like was so often the case with Danielson oddities and curiosities like this, it’s something that just as easily could not have happened had he not wanted it to. Small as it is, it’s a lovely little gift.

BRYAN DANIELSON VS. DEAN ALLMARK, ASW (2/19/2008)

When I say things like “he refused to be uninteresting” about Bryan Danielson or when other people bring up his willingness to seemingly give anything a shot, there’s not a better example of it than this. 

On one of the famed British holiday camp shows, full of kids and families who came to see Wrestling and seemingly nobody who came to see ROH great Bryan Danielson, the American Dragon leans more into the former half than ever before. The wrestling, as great as it is between two, is secondary to a free-from-pressure Danielson having the time of his life stooging and, especially, riffing on the microphone before the match, singing the U.S. national anthem as poorly as possible, and leaning into every Ugly American stereotype to ever exist. Making a referee put his hands over his ears so he never has to hear the booing, going as off-pitch as possible, and seemingly forgetting a third of the words on purpose, it’s not only some of the most entertaining work of his career, but some of the most entertaining jingoistic heel work of all time. 

It is perhaps the most ridiculous performance ever caught on tape from one of the best of all time, and to me, as instructive as a hundred half hour epics. 

BRYAN DANIELSON VS. SCOTT LOST, PWG THE GENTLE ART OF MAKING ENEMIES (1/10/2009)

This isn’t so much a different side of Bryan or something hidden away out of sight so much as it is a pet favorite of mine (and also kind of a way to sneak in a Scott Lost primer). Bad guy waylays good guy at the start, gets a receipt and then some, before a hot run. Nothing complex, a little bit out of sight in the middle of a show and as not the most PWG match that there is, but efficient and mean in the way that I’ve always preferred my good guy Danielson to be. Classic meat and potatoes pro wrestling that, as is inevitable with someone as prolific as Our Hero, fell through the gaps at the time. 

BRYAN DANIELSON/COLT CABANA VS. JIMMY RAVE/BISON SMITH, ROH 7TH ANNIVERSARY SHOW (3/21/2009)

Taking a background role again, Danielson once more contributes to one of Ring of Honor’s most fun matches of the decade. 

Revolving around the returns of Cabana and Rave from WWE and TNA respectively, the match is one of the only times new booker Adam Pearce’s “back to basics” pared down approach ever really worked, combining quality nonsense with great wrestling, and anchored by Danielson the whole time. Be it clowning on Rave like it was 2006-7 all over again or the all-too-rare underdog pairing with big Bison Smith, he’s switching between two roles before returning to straight up ass kicking by the end, while also having a sense unlike most others in his time and place for when to take a step back. It’s not not about him, but it’s a light-hearted entire thing that, again, benefits from Danielson’s ability and willingness to go into new places. 

Four years before becoming the wellspring of great televised tag team wrestling, Bryan not only again shows that it was in him all along, but leads a joyful display of the kind of crowd pleasing yet serious flatout lively bullshit that independent wrestling so often lacks. 

DB SQUARED, WWE NXT (2011)

It’s not all matches. 

Frankly, as one might expect with the other half of his generational comedic pairing with Derrick Bateman (RIP, tragic fireworks accident, loser EC3 is another guy), it’s not about the matches at all. 

On NXT’s fourth season, somewhere in between an awareness dawning that this was a doomed project that had little value and the decision months later with NXT Redemption to lean fully into a deranged barely-canon pocket universe, Derrick Bateman and pro Daniel Bryan were the first pairing to realize the comedic potential that a lack of corporate attention offered up. In a preview of adjacent web show bits to come in the 2010s like Bryan vs. The Bear and his run on the JBL & Cole Show, the two became the highlight of the show’s entire run, highlighted by the infamous and clearly rigged guessing game segment in which Bateman answered in complete non sequiturs, only for Bryan stunningly to get all of the answers right anyways, which themselves were so inane that they were impervious to being called out as farce. 

A miracle that could have only happened right there in Tulsa, Oklahoma. 

Even doing remarkably silly and, objectively, somewhat beneath him C-show WWE comedy, Bryan was without peer. 

DANIEL BRYAN VS. BIG E, WWE SMACKDOWN LIVE (6/12/2018)

In the first segment of a nonsense filler television gauntlet to shortcut someone to a title match, Danielson gets Big E in their only singles outing of real note or consequence, and they have quite the uncommon match for their environment. Not only a babyface match that didn’t often happen outside of main events at the time, but a big and small match with the small guy working a little more from above, and ending with zero nonsense or fat on the bone. It’s a match that, after four years in a tag team, makes Big E look like a can’t miss future main event good guy, not only plugged into a Danielson Classic, but tailored to what he does best, and allowing him to show off some selling chops as well.

The tragedy is that fifty rematches didn’t follow it and that it took another three years to get around to delivering on the promise of this match, but in terms of controlling what they could control, it’s one of the great unheralded matches (or parts of a match) of its time and place, for whatever that means. 

Not a new kind of match from Bryan in a macro sense, but on the whole, looking a little closer, it’s very rarely the version of this kind of Bryan match that gets to happen, walking a line few ever get to get their feet on and walk into the distance on like this, and that only a few have ever done better.

DANIEL BRYAN/ERICK ROWAN VS. HEAVY MACHINERY, WWE STOMPING GROUNDS (6/23/2019)

Last comes the rarest role and style/format of all, really only existing in these few months with Erick Rowan, in which Bryan commits himself to being the evil genius in a heel tag team. 

There’s something very anachronistic, in a charming way, about this all. Not just the act itself — although it has that old feeling of a top heel spending time in between runs near the top on something like this rather than the wheel spinning WWE wrestlers often get up to — but the match too. Put against a team of fat guys, one of them in Otis overflowing with his own undeniable charm, and for all the modern moves and updates to a tag team format, it feels like a 1980s WWF match in the best way. A little nonsense, taken just seriously enough to have value. Meanness and formula and meat and potatoes ass playing the oldest hits in the book, held together by one of the best wrestlers alive, applying his talents in a way that might not be the best use of them, but that’s a little too great to call wasteful. Tight and efficient, but never rushed or truncated. There’s a mastery of the clock just as much as there is of everything larger. 

Orchestrated by Our Hero, it’s fun as hell and also just good ass awesome wrestling in equal measure. It’s far from the greatest use of his talents, but I’m happy it happened, because I think it’s cool as hell that we know what it looks like. 

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That’s the thing about Bryan Danielson. 

Nobody would deny that the man has his sweet spots where he winds up more often than not and that, for the most part, his most celebrated matches have that status for a reason and that there was an embarrassment of riches in that regard. 

But it’s the other stuff that I keep going back for. 

Dumb little comedy segments on web-exclusive shows that never mattered to begin with. Short promos. The way he delivers certain off the cuff lines in the middle of a match when talking to hecklers. The lesser known matches and performances, everywhere one might imagine. Different kinds of matches, different kinds of roles, going everywhere, and having a career that offers up a buffet of wrestling ranging from cowardice to all-time heroics and from complete farce to the deadly serious.

More than that, the way he puts so much into everything he does, no matter how big or small or serious or goofy it is. Everything he does is done with what feels like full and total commitment, and there’s nothing he’s ever really shied away from. A less adventurous and more stubborn person might complain that he spent a decade not having half hour prestige epics, but to me, the willingness and the ability to take these silly ideas and make something out of them is what makes Bryan Danielson so much more interesting and so much more impressive than most other “great” wrestlers. It doesn’t always work out the best, there are maybe things in given moments he would have been better at or that would have resulted in something more successful on paper, but when the same joy Bryan puts into those classics also goes into hoarsely bellowing out the American national anthem in front of loud English children or writing bullshit on a whiteboard or leaning into mass appeal nonsense, to me, it’s always something I’m grateful we got to see from a wrestler this good at everything.

If there’s ever been something to learn from Bryan Danielson (assuming you are not a wrestler and do not aspire to be, in which case, there are a million other things), or to admire, it’s that kind of spirit of adventure, a willingness to try whatever’s out there, and to commit to it completely.

Speaking in terms of effort and commitment as well, Bryan Danielson does not say no, and neither should you. 

When offered the chance to do something new or weird or even just a little out of your comfort zone, like maybe writing a longer form article that isn’t just a long winded match review, or any number of way cooler real world experiences, not only should you immediately say yes, but in most cases, I think you owe it to yourself to do so. 

Just ask Bryan Danielson, who just might have a certain fondness for that word.