Bryan Danielson's ROH World Title / ROH Pure Title unification match with Nigel McGuinness. A brutal war in Nigel's hometown, with Danielson bringing home the gold thanks to a seemingly endless flurry of elbows to the head of a bruised and bleeding McGuinness.
Wrestling then-World Heavyweight Champion Chris Jericho in his first match ever on WWE television. He lost, but still - what a way to debut.
His entire angle after being eliminated from NXT. Let's go through it:
1. His "Who is Daniel Bryan?" promo after he's eliminated from NXT, wherein he makes it clear that Daniel Bryan =/= Bryan Danielson. (The name change was forgotten by the subsequent episode, but what the hell.) Especially notable is the camera shaking, albeit slightly, as though the cameraman is giddy with the prospect of what's to come for him.
You can also see Matt Striker grinning like a Cheshire Cat whilst Bryan is talking, starting from when Bryan starts building towards the end of the promo.
2. And then the following week, the most brilliant Worked Shoot in recent history -- punking out The Miz (with William Regal and CM Punk - who, in WWE kayfabe, have no history with Daniel Bryan except for NXT - both enthusiastically agreeing with Bryan behind Miz's back) and slapping around Michael Cole like he owed him money, all while disassembling the politicking in theWWE and their blatant ignorance of non-WWE promotions. The camerawork is notable during that brawl, as well. Other than it airing at all (the first and best sign of a Worked Shoot), tell me that didn't look real.
3. And then the next week, Bryan follows that up by faking an apology to Michael Cole for the previous week's attack, instead apologizing for him being the worst announcer in wrestling today. Cole rips on Bryan with an (uncharacteristically) good promo, saying that Bryan had "tapped out" of NXT because he had "no heart". This earned Cole another attack (with Bryan escaping security's grasp so he could tackle Cole into the ringside barricade), and as security led Bryan past the WWE "Pros", The Miz started to run his mouth at Bryan - so Bryan fired back with a swift right, dropping Miz like a bad habit. In the end, Bryan had punked out both Miz and Cole for the second week in a row.
4. And did it again the next week on Raw, beating The Miz clean in a match. When Miz tries to go for a post-match beatdown, dragging Bryan over to the announcer's desk and making Bryan apologize to Michael Cole, Bryan turns around and throws Miz right over the table, right into Cole.
WWE Raw, May 3, 2010: His match against Batista in a beat-the-clock challenge. It's some of the best 5 minutes you will find in all wrestling. Batista did his fair share too.
WWE Raw, June 7 2010: The NXT Riot. All eight Season 1 NXT rookies laid waste to the entire show during a CM Punk vs. John Cena main event, including beating up commentators, the timekeeper, and even Justin Roberts (whom Bryan was personally choking out with his own tie). After trashing the ringside area, they would proceed to gang attack Cena, brutalizing him with multiple finishers, including Bryan actually kicking John Cena's fucking head in. He preceded this kick by yelling "YOU ARE NOT BETTER THAN ME!!!" several times and then spit in Cena's face.
WWE Summerslam, August 15 2010: The show's main event is a seven-on-seven elimination match between a team of WWE all-stars and The Nexus, and Team WWE has a one-man deficit. Earlier in the show, The Miz accepted Cena's offer of joining Team WWE; later, he comes out during the Team WWE entrances and looks to be the final man for the team. Cena stops him as he makes his entrance, however, and informs Miz that he took too long deciding whether or not to join the team, and that he'd found someone else in that time. Daniel Bryan comes out, and the cheers of millions of nerds causes the internet to explode. And in what was both his WWE return match and his WWE PPV debut (in the main event of the second biggest show of the year, no less!), "AmDrag" made sure to leave his mark - in this case, by completely owning both Darren Young and Heath Slater in about a minute each, and making it all the way to the final four.
What made this a particularly surprising moment was that almost nobody expected this; Bryan's initial firing had taken place only a few months beforehand, and the general consensus was that he'd maybe be back in late 2010 or worse (if he came back at all). The fact that none of the dirtsheets or news sites picked up on it makes it even more incredible. It would have been the perfect surprise... if WWE.com had not been updated with a story on Bryan's return a few minutes before the main event took place.
That .com article doesn't really matter, though, unless you were on .com in those few minutes.
How big was Danielson's return to WWE? After he came back, "Bryan Danielson" was the #1 tending topic on Twitter worldwide.
You can tell how awesome Daniel Bryan Danielson is by the fact that he was for a while the only member of The Nexus to have his own TV Tropes page.
WWE Night of Champions, September 19 2010: Daniel Bryan makes The Miz tap out to win his first title in WWE, the United States Championship, in arguably Miz's best match to date. Smarks everywhere cheered; Michael Cole threw a hissy fit.
WWE Hell in a Cell, October 3 2010: Daniel Bryan would retain his US title against The Miz and John Morrison in a Triple Threat Submissions Count Anywhere match. Following the win, Michael Cole would be forced to admit that Bryan was the better man that night.
WWE Bragging Rights, October 24 2010: Bryan stole the show with Dolph Ziggler in the opening match, winning his Smackdown vs Raw contest and being the ONLY Raw superstar to win their Smackdown vs Raw contest that night. He then went on to beat Ziggler the next night on Raw, and kicked his head in on Smackdown to pin him for a third time that week!
And just to add icing to the cake, that Bragging Rights match is considered by WWE to be one of the top two matches of 2010. The other? The Undertaker vs Shawn Michaels at Wrestlemania. It seems WWE finally realizes that they've got gold with Daniel Bryan Danielson, which might be why they gave him a pair of infatuated escorts in The Bella Twins later in the year.
On the January 25 episode of NXT Season 4, Bryan was in a Pro vs Pro match with Ted DiBiase. In the middle of the match, fellow pro R-Truth started a call-and-response Daniel Bryan chant. The response was deafening. The chants would only continue through the match.
He brought The Big Show to his knees during the Draft Battle Royal of 2011.
His promo against Cody Rhodes, where he calls out Cody's narcissistic "The World is Ugly" attitude, claiming that his father Dusty Rhodes, despite not being an attractive man, was a much better person than he would ever be and refused to accept that fact.
Winning the goddamn Smackdown Money in the Bank! And people thought he wouldn't go anywhere in the WWE!
His promo after winning Money in the Bank did a lot to help his reputation on the mic. He excoriated Michael Cole (again), played to the crowd, and delivered the kind of promo Main Event guys are supposed to deliver. Then he beat the crap out of Heath Slater.
He's still a Badass; unlike all the other Money in the Bank winners that cashed in when the champions had defended their titles (but were totally exhausted from it), he stated that his Money in the Bank contract would be cashed in on Wrestlemania 28's main event. Now, it's a seven month race to see who's gonna have it by April 1st, 2012 and to see who's gonna get his fucking head kicked in.
Or not, as Bryan is champ, and seems to be heading for a Show/Henry feud
After he gets knocked by a jealous Wade Barrett, he catches him in the Lebell Lock while laying down.
His match against Alberto Del Rio also counts. Two of the rising stars of the WWE going head to head...that was amazing!
If I'm not mistaken, didn't he just get an incredible match out of Mark Henry, of all people? And even gave his own against the World's Strongest Man? That's pretty damn awesome.
WWE TLC. The Big Show defeats Mark Henry in a pretty good Chairs match. Mark Henry DDTs Big Show onto Chairs. Daniel Bryan comes out and cashes his Money In the Bank Briefcase to win. The pop was deafening. And then he went to the camera, looked into it, and said "Thank you to everybody that has supported me these past twelve years." Michael Cole is dumbfounded, and Show... has a look on his face as if he was surprised, but impressed. A fitting milestone to one that basically founded one of the WWE's biggest feeder organizations.
The Raw following TLC saw CM Punk, Zack Ryder and Bryan Danielson in the same ring, basically saying what no one thought possible, had actually happened. They would later in their six man tag match enter through the crowd, which was all kinds of awesome!
Managed to retain his title 3 weeks in row, when facing The Big Show and Mark Henry in rematches. The first time he managed to get a disqualification when he got Henry to shove him in front of the referee when he was facing Big Show, the second week, against Big Show again, the match went to a non contest as Big Show ran in to A.J. The third week, he and Mark Henry was in a lumberjack match where Bryan managed to get the lumberjacks so riled up that they stormed the ring and beat both him and Henry, before all hell broke lose and they pretty much started fighting each other.
Make that a month for he survives the Steel Cage match.
January 30, 2012. Champion vs Champion match. Yes, World Heavyweight Champion Daniel Bryan faces WWE Champion CM Punk.
Back in Ring of Honor, Danielson defended his title against semi-retired veteran Lance Storm (known as one of the most underrated wrestlers of all time, and the only man to unify WCW's United States, Hardcore and Cruiserweight championships). Over the course of 30 minutes of beautiful technical skill, each of them gave as good as they got, with Danielson kicking out of the Super Kick and Cradle Piledriver, and escaping the Canadian Maple Leaf, with the match finally ending when, after several resisted attempts, Danielson locks on the Cattle Mutilation, and Storm finally taps. Both men recieve a standing ovation as they shake hands and embrace, and the fans chant "Thank You Lance!" and "You've Still Got It!" to a moved Storm.
April 2, 2012 edition of Monday Night Raw. Despite being squashed in 18 seconds by Sheamus at the opening match of Wrestlemania XXVIII, that event has made Daniel Bryan more over with the audience now than ever before. While the cameras were off, Daniel Bryan broke his heel character and thanked for the crowd for their undying support and constant cheering of "YES!" which he said most likely got him a new shirt. The audience deafened the arena with "YES!" chants and followed along with Bryan as he began the cheer before leaving.
And that lasted for most of the entire Raw broadcast itself prior to that, where fans were either chanting "YES!" or Bryan's name during most of the show, despite the fact that Bryan himself only appeared for one small segment.
Bryan, along with Sheamus, finally getting their time in the sun with an instant-classic, show-stealing 2-out-of-3 falls at Extreme Rules 2012.
May 25, 2012 edition of Smackdown. Bryan sneak attacks Kane and hits him with twenty-six steel chair shots in a row.