"Daniel" Bryan Danielson Appreciation Thread

[VaderBomb]

I'll never forget the first time that I watched a Bryan Danielson match.

It was about a decade ago. I was a senior in High School and hadn't watched wrestling since the tail end of the Attitude Era. My father had recently passed away and my mother sold our family house and moved to Florida with my sister. I was determined to stay in Massachusetts but I didn't have much money and after about seven months I had to bite the bullet and part ways with all of my best friends.

While in Florida, I made the best of it and truly enjoyed myself but I knew that for my own sanity, I had to eventually move back up north where there were seasons. There's only so much flat land and heat that a thick blooded boy raised on hills, snowy Christmases, and dead leaf Halloweens can take.

I went out of my way to make as less friends as possible and isolate myself for a couple years. Within this time period, I spent most of my time exploring outdoors, wandering miles and miles into jungles and really getting some solid spiritual time with myself.

While hanging out indoors, I decided to get back into pro-wrestling. My childhood memories of watching wrestling were so fond and Edge (one of my favorites as a kid) was getting his first big main event push in WWE. I enjoyed WWE's product slightly but my love for technical wrestling wasn't being fulfilled.

Via the internet I found out about Ring of Honor and watched a few matches that I could come across. I stumbled upon some matches by Bryan Danielson and they changed my life. From there I moved onto Japanese puroresu, old territory tapes, lucha stuff and indie shit and essentially fell back in love with pro-wrestling completely and whole heartedly.

I credit Bryan Danielson for that. His presence and style was so magnificent. Hard hitting. Risk taking. Technically brilliant. A master of storytelling. Unpredictable as all fuck. Bryan was everything that I ever wanted out of a wrestler in the ring and out of the ring he was surely the most lovable fucker of all time. I dare you to watch his dolphin promo with Paul London and not at least crack a smile.

That's around the period that I first joined WWE-Club as one of Danielson's official hype-men years before he was signed. Only a few people cared to check his shit out but I knew that eventually he'd win most of you guys over. Kyle knew what was up pretty early on, and that dude who had the classic bald Danielson avatar back in the day on WWE-Club. He knew what was up too.

When Bryan got signed few years later, it was a big surprise for me. I had moved back to Massachusetts and had recently gotten a job working in the kitchen of a local restaurant. I was borderline homeless at the time, living in the total slum of an apartment with half a dozen friends and had no access to watching WWE aside from SmackDown which coincidentally was on one of the three channels that worked on our cable jack.

A few of the guys at work were WWE fans and I heard one guy say the name "Daniel Bryan" while talking about the original NXT. I immediately was furious that some guy was presumably ripping off the name of my favorite wrestler but then I asked a few questions and began to accept the situation rationally.

Then I was all like: "Holy shit. Danielson's going to be on TV!"

I moved out of my shitty apartment with my girlfriend and I'd be lying if I didn't say that at least 10% of the influence that I had to move out and better my living conditions was because I really wanted to be able to watch Bryan on television. I wanted to see the guy make the money that he deserved and show the world just how awesome that he is at what he does.

Bryan's been my favorite wrestler for a really long time. If we never get to see him wrestle again, I'm sad but we have so many memories to relive and hopefully even experience for the first time. He's always been the classiest and most honorable dude around and I wouldn't regret calling him the greatest of all time in a lot of ways.

I love you Bryan Danielson. You are one of my favorite people on this earth and you deserve all of the best in every way. I know you'll probably never see this but if you do... Thank you!

Please feel free to share any stories or memories or your own!

[Viazon]

I went to Wrestlemania 22 in 2006. It was in Chicago. My friend who I went with suggested we go to a couple of ROH shows while we are there. Wrestlemania was obviously on the Sunday and there were ROH shows in Chicago on Friday and Saturday night. My indy wrestling knowledge at the time was very limited but I was excited to go.

I had been to big arena WWE shows before when they had come to England, so I kind of knew what to expect when I was at Wrestlemania. But these ROH shows were something else. It is a completely different atmosphere, seeing a wrestling show in a gym hall. Something no bigger than we used to have at school.

There I got to see the likes of AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, Christopher Daniels, Austin Aries, Alex Shelley, etc. I was familiar with them from TNA and was really excited to see them live. I also got my first introduction to the likes of Colt Cabana, Matt Sydal and Claudio Castagnoli, who we all know today as Cesaro. That night I saw some of the best matches I had seen. There was a six man tag match featuring a few wrestlers from Dragongate that was completely out of this world. Colt Cabana was in the middle of a feud with Homicide that culminated in an insane Chicago street fight where the crowd ended up throwing the chairs in the ring. It was nuts. I hadn't seen anything like it.

But over the course of the two nights, there was one guy who stood out. The ROH World Champion at the time. I guy never heard of before. A guy called Bryan Danielson. I saw this guy come out. I thought he looked a little odd. He was short. He was small. He was kinda ugly. And he was arrogant. He was playing the heel and playing it well. Before I even saw him fight I thought he was funny. He came out with The Final Countdown as his entrance music. And the whole crowd sang along to it as the chorus hit. It was awesome how everyone was just in unison. Over those two night he had two amazing matches. One against Roderick Strong. Another against Lance Storm.

I was just amazed at what this guy could do. What thing that stood out was the amount of pain he was able to take. In both matches, he got chopped so much, it got to the point his chest started bleeding it was insane.

I left those two ROH shows with an appreciation for these amazing indy wrestlers. Seeing as I didn't have much access to indy shows back in England, I had hoped some of these guys made their way to WWE. Which some of them did. Colt Cabana came to WWE but ultimately went nowhere. Matt Sydal signed under the name Evan Bourne and had a little bit of success before getting released. Cesaro is still going strong and hopefully will be a main eventer one day.

When I got back into WWE, circa 2010-2012, I noticed they had a guy called Daniel Bryan. Immediately I thought, I wonder if he is Bryan Danielson. I started tuning in more and realised that he was in fact him. I was happy for him but didn't think he would get anywhere. What with him being an indy wrestler and all. I could never have imagined how far he would get. And he basically only got there because of how over he was with the fans. He basically only got there because WWE had no choice to put him there. I can't remember a time where the WWE were forced their hand because of such a positive audience reaction.

No one deserves it more than him, for all the talent and heart he has. I really hope this isn't the end of his career and I hope he returns soon.