10 Best Pre-WWE Daniel Bryan Matches

1. VS KENTA (RoH's Glory By Honor 5: Night 2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOrotOaHURM If you haven't figured it out by now, KENTA is now making headlines as Hideo Itami in NXT, and is one of the biggest international talent signings in company history. Back in 2006, though, he was merely a "special attraction" wrestler for Ring Of Honor, making the occasional trip to America from Japan for a couple matches a year, before returning home. Let this picture get painted for you, right away... three weeks before this match took place, Danielson separated his shoulder and suffered three torn tendons (two in his shoulder, one in his chest) during a match with Colt Cabana. KENTA, of course, isn't going to take it easy on him, and he goes after the shoulder and chest area repeatedly. He lands some stiff kicks to Danielson's chest and shoulder throughout the match. Those are the types of kicks that would drop a man who is at 100%, but you could pretty much feel Danielson's agony with each kick nearly bringing him to tears. He was competing as a one-armed man for a large portion of the match, with his injured arm hanging there, doing nothing. The story is almost that of a horror movie, with the "villain" slowly stalking the "hero", and the "hero" having to constantly keep running to stay alive, all while trying to get in shots of his own. He knows he can't stand toe-to-toe and compete in that regard, so he's picking his shots. Damn near the entire first half of the match featured KENTA dealing with attempted offense by Danielson, only to casually brush it off by simply attacking the shoulder and/or chest, stopping him dead in his tracks. It's a simple strategy, but why wouldn't you target an opponent's weakness if you're in a match with him? Normally, Danielson loves to take control of a match, and wrestle it at his own pace. Here, he had no choice but to wrestle at KENTA's pace, because his injury wouldn't let him take over. The second half of the match saw Danielson enter "ahh, screw it" mode and just go all out, even with his injury. You could see the pain etched into his face, but he turned everything up a notch. He moved faster, he hit harder, and he made everything else mean something. That's when things picked up speed and we got ourselves a fast paced, all-out war. There's a spot towards the end that is about as believable a near fall as you'll ever see in your life. Danielson springs off the top rope at KENTA, only for KENTA to catch him in mid-air and then deliver the Go 2 Sleep (for those unaware, KENTA is the creator of the move, not CM Punk), which had the crowd going mental, only for Danielson to get his foot on the bottom rope before the three count. Not only is this the best match of Bryan Danielson's career, many say it's the best match in RoH history, with some even calling it the best match in independent wrestling history, which covers a lot of ground. If you haven't seen it, do everything you can to go out of your way to change that.