10 Reasons Why Daniel Bryan Belongs On WWE's Mount Rushmore

Daniel Bryan is the greatest professional wrestler of all time.

You need only look at his impeccable runs literally everywhere he's gone throughout his illustrious career to warrant such a statement. Ring Of Honor? World Champion. Pro Wrestling Guerrilla? World Champion. westside Xtreme wrestling? World Heavyweight Champion. World Wrestling Entertainment? WWE Champion. Wrestling Observer Wrestler of the Year, Best Technical Wrestler, Match of the Year, Best On Interviews, Best Pro Wrestling Book, Best Pro Wrestling DVD, King of the Indies, multiple secondary championships, multiple tag team championships, the list could quite literally cover this entire introduction.

The guy is, quite simply, the best to ever lace a pair of boots. Once more, you need only look at his career-defining matches and story arcs vs. Nigel McGuinness, Takeshi Morishima, John Cena, Samoa Joe, Sheamus, Kofi Kingston, et al. He could make anything work.

Now banished from WWE SmackDown and, hopefully, on his way out of WWE for one last run on the independent circuit before retiring on his own terms, it's time to pay respect to the WWE career of one of the most captivating performers in company history. There's a lot of ground to cover.

He's a shoo-in for WWE's Mount Rushmore, though, because of this...

June 2010's debut of the Nexus was the peak of the faction, partially because Daniel Bryan choked out ring announcer Justin Roberts with his own tie. It simply wasn't what we had come to expect of WWE at this time, and thus, he was promptly fired.

So, what next for the former 'American Dragon'?

Back to the indies. His string of matches from June to October encompassed a who's who of top-level names from today's era of professional wrestling; Eddie Kingston, Aleister Black (then-Tommy End), Johnny Gargano, Bobby Fish, Roderick Strong, Shingo Takagi, Jon Moxley, and, um, Savio Vega(?) all battled Bryan Danielson through this time.

There was just one problem with this: Daniel Bryan was signed back to a WWE contract, returning at SummerSlam 2010 alongside John Cena's Team WWE to battle the Nexus in that infamous main event. Per WWE's rules, surely this automatically cancelled the remainder of his independent bookings.

Vince McMahon and co. made an exception here, though. They knew how much of an asset Bryan was to them, and didn't want to squander any chances at getting him back. While holding WWE's United States Championship, Daniel Bryan ended his most recent indie run by defeating Shelton Benjamin on 1 October 2010 at a show for the New York-based Northeast Wrestling.