10 Wrestlers Who Changed WWE’s In-Ring Style
3. Tie: CM Punk & Daniel Bryan
CM Punk and Daniel Bryan were never meant to experience top-level success in WWE.
Punk was a nerd who didn't drink and, in the words of Triple H and Shawn Michaels, didn't "know how to work". Bryan was also a nerd, a bland one who didn't eat meat, and only knew how to entertain fifty-odd basement-dwellers in the high school gymnasiums they never scored in. They smashed through countless other roadblocks to become the company's twin star successors to Cena and Batista - but both adapted their styles to conform with WWE's.
Disciples and innovators of the puroresu-inspired style of early 2000s Ring Of Honor, Punk and Bryan brought with them an advanced knowledge of submissions and grappling, fused with the stiff Strong Style of the Orient.
No longer permitted to land opponents on their necks with dangerously-angled impact manoeuvres, Punk and Bryan substituted them for inventive interpretations of customary WWE spots. Punk, especially evident in his famous matches opposite John Cena, mastered the art of the cut-off spot in reversing Cena's patented Five Moves Of Doom with a beguiling and shifting repertoire of counters.
Bryan, meanwhile, implemented his own Moves of Doom variation, by backflipping over a standing opponent, lulling them into a clothesline, and dropping them his own flying version.