14. Walking In Memphis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZEIdVPVMfk Many thanks to
Danielle Matheson of With Spandex for bringing this one back to everyone's attention. Around the turn of the century, a greener-than-Kermit Bryan Danielson was the American Dragon but a version wearing an actual dragon mask. For those who dont know, when Danielson started out his trainers - amongst them Shawn Michaels - worried that he was too expressionless when he wrestled, so they put him under a hood. As a part of the WWFs developmental programme at the time, Dragon was in Memphis Championship Wrestling, slowly becoming the Bryan Danielson we know today. Thats where he met his eventual mentor William Regal, the man who would do more for his wrestling career than any other. The first half of this video is the important stuff, for the purposes of this article: it showcases the weird goofiness that characterised the best of his character work in WWE a dozen years later and its only a few months into his career here. The man's probably about eighteen or nineteen.