Wrestlers With The Most World Titles (Across All Major Federations)
17. Daniel Bryan (9)
4 WWE Championships
2 World Heavyweight Championships
1 PWG World Championship
1 ROH Championship
On a recent episode of SmackDown, John Cena tried to list all of the setbacks and downfalls he's had to overcome over the course of his career. Honestly though, the I-went-through-so-many-hardships-and-struggles narrative is a bit hard to take seriously coming from someone who Cagematch notes has a 78% win record and hasn't exactly been under-pushed.
Daniel Bryan on the other hand fits that narrative perfectly. Being fired months into WWE debut, wrestling a dark match at WrestleMania XXVII, losing his world title in 18 seconds at the following edition, being repeatedly screwed over the summer of 2013, repeatedly labelled a B+ player in a half-kayfabe half-we-really-think-it fashion, having to vacate his world title weeks into his triumphant post-WrestleMania XXX reign and being told by the medical staff he couldn't compete anymore: now we're talking hardships. And yet Daniel Bryan always managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. This is a testament not only to his wrestling skills but also to his incredible courage and spirit.
In between the ropes, he is a fabulous pro-wrestler. He is the ultimate wrestling polyglot, fluid in every different genre of the art. His inventiveness to tell all sorts of stories appears to be endless, just like his moveset. He's one of the few wrestlers in history to have a Wrestling Observer Newsletter Award *named after them*, as the Best Technical Wrestler receives each year the Bryan Danielson award (that's what happens when you win it continuously from 2005 to 2013). And while on the subject of WON awards, guess who was voted Most Outstanding Wrestler of the 2000s decade?
Since his 2018 return, Daniel has proved he never lost it and is at all times just one right-opponent away from delivering a classic (Brock Lesnar, Kofi Kingston) or at least an excellent match (The Fiend, Drew Gulak). The man is still only 39, and that means the case for him being one of the best wrestlers of this century has plenty of time to get even stronger.