Yes!

by Daniel Bryan

  My second tour of England was much the same as my first back in 2003: lots of fun, stress-free wrestling, where I could further hone the “entertainment” aspect of my performance. Also, as on my previous trip there, it was kind of like I disappeared from the planet when I was in England. My cell phone didn’t work there, so other than trying to make a monthly call to my family (and that’s a very loose definition of “try”), I was pretty much incommunicado. Sometimes on rare days off, I’d go to the library to check my e-mail, and on one such occasion, I had a message in my in-box—from CM Punk, I believe, though I could be mistaken—citing a rumor that both WWE and TNA (Total Nonstop Action) were interested in Ring of Honor’s three top guys: Punk, Samoa Joe, and me.

  I’d done a few enhancement matches for WWE earlier in the year and knew I was at least on their radar, because I was always given competitive matches rather than just getting squashed. After that e-mail, I became more conscious of getting to the library on days off.

  Soon after, Samoa Joe signed with TNA, and they pushed him right away on TV. Punk went the other way and signed a developmental deal with WWE. I stayed in England for four months on this trip without hearing anything more about it. When I flew back to the United States that September, I kind of expected to be offered a deal by one of the two organizations, but when I turned my phone on, I didn’t have a single voice mail, and nobody from either company contacted me in the weeks that followed. (To be fair, I didn’t call them either. That’s that lack of ambition.)

  I did, however, receive a phone call from Gabe Sapolsky, booker for Ring of Honor. He didn’t reach out to offer me a contract or a ton of money; his offer was something different: my first opportunity to be “the Man,” as Ric Flair often described it.

  Gabe has admitted he never saw that potential in me at first. He thought I was a great wrestler but lacked the ability to be the guy the company was based around. He saw that trait in Punk, and he saw it in Samoa Joe, who had a nearly two-year reign with the ROH Title. Those guys were locker room leaders, and each of them had a unique charisma. Gabe saw me as a nice, quiet guy, content to just do my own thing.

  With Punk leaving for WWE and Joe heading to TNA, Jamie Noble (known as James Gibson in Ring of Honor) won the ROH Championship in August 2005. But not too long after that, WWE offered Jamie a contract to return, which he took, and Gabe was out of options.

  “You’re the guy we want to build around,” Gabe said to me. “But to do that, I have to know that you won’t leave for WWE or TNA, or be gone all the time on Japan tours.” I didn’t have any offers from those larger organizations and hadn’t heard a word from New Japan since I left for England, but there was definitely more to consider than that before accepting. Being the ROH Champion was a tough gig. They would rely on my matches to sell DVDs and bring people to the buildings. To go on last and send the people home happy was a considerable challenge because everyone was trying to have the best match on the card, and by the time you went out there, the fans had seen it all. Nonetheless, it wasn’t more than a few seconds before I agreed. I vowed I wouldn’t go to WWE and that I’d put all of my energy into ROH for at least one year. It was a huge opportunity, but I needed to raise my game.

  At Glory by Honor IV on September 17, 2005, I beat Jamie Noble (competing under his real name, James Gibson) for the Ring of Honor World Championship. Even though we didn’t go on last, I knew we were the main event. Jamie and I wrestled our hearts out for over twenty minutes in front of the very appreciative fans in Lake Grove, New York. I always loved wrestling Jamie, but this was the first time we got to have that kind of match—the kind of match people would remember. When it ended, after Jamie ultimately tapped out to the cross-face chicken wing, the crowd erupted. He and I hugged, after which I grabbed the microphone and promised the fans that while I was champion, I wouldn’t even think of leaving Ring of Honor. Ironically enough, I missed the next two ROH shows—two of the biggest shows in the company’s history because they featured a rare appearance in America by Japanese wrestling legend Kenta Kobashi—because they took place on the weekend my sister got married. (To me, some things are more important than wrestling.)

  My Ring of Honor World Championship win has always ranked very high on my list of accomplishments. They chose me to be the man, and that hasn’t happened very often in my career. It was one of the few times when it was decided I was going to be given the ball and get pushed into the top spot to carry the promotion.

  Before I won the title, the ROH fans hadn’t seen me since May, when I had a shaved head and a long beard. When I returned, I came back clean-cut, with no beard and neatly trimmed hair. Whereas before I wore black, I came back wearing all maroon, gear given to me by William Regal. I even came out wearing a maroon jacket with AMERICAN DRAGON embroidered on the back. It was a more classic look, inspired by an older generation of wrestlers like Bob Backlund and Billy Robinson, symbolizing that I would be more of a sportsman and less of an “entertainer.” Soon I realized that was a mistake.

  My very first championship defense was against AJ Styles, and our rivalry was based on a story about who of us was the better wrestler. We both wrestled on the aggressive side, but at the end of the match, fans were supposed to like both of us. We had a good match with a decent response from the crowd, but it wasn’t what a title match should be, as far as crowd reaction. The same happened with the next several title matches, none of which lit the world on fire. I knew I needed to change something or my title reign was going to bomb.

  It wasn’t until I was in the ring wrestling Roderick Strong that I found the answer. The fans in Connecticut were fully behind Roderick, with a few of them jeering me. I started to subtly get more aggressive, then became less subtle about it. That kind of transition isn’t so strange in wrestling, but my thought process changed: I am the Ring of Honor World Champion, and this guy isn’t in my league. In fact, not only is Roderick not in my league, nobody is in my league—not anybody in ROH, not anybody in WWE. I am the best and I will prove it every night.

  That night, after I beat Roderick, I cut a promo about being the “Best in the World,” and it stuck throughout my 462-day reign. It doesn’t sound that great now since people have heard both Chris Jericho and CM Punk claim to be “the best in the world” on national TV. But at the time, nobody had consistently made that claim in years. It legitimized me among the independent wrestling fan base, and I was then a top guy anywhere I went, against anybody I faced. It worked because it was boastful and gave me an attitude; it was also a rallying cry for the Ring of Honor fans. They believed ROH was producing the best wrestling in America. WWE was far too interested in entertainment, and that didn’t appeal to this audience, who wanted something grittier and organic. They wanted most of their action between the ropes, not on the microphone or in silly backstage vignettes.

  Most of all, they wanted to believe that the wrestlers they watched at Ring of Honor events—at least some of them—were “better” than those appearing on TV programming of larger organizations, so I changed my character to appeal to that desire.

  The night of that first match against Roderick was also the first in a series of experiments I was doing on wrestling finishes. A standard wrestling trope was that you beat guys with your “finisher.” Some guys have two, but very rarely do people have more than a couple of moves that they will actually beat guys with.

  For the more astute fans, matches become more predictable: They know that even if a wrestler hits another with a big impact move, if it’s not his “finisher,” it won’t end the match. I wanted people to think that a match could end at any time. On top of that, though the hardcore fans at ROH very much appreciated wrestling, it was hard to get them to believe that any of it was legitimate, after so many years of WWE saying it was all “just entertainment.” We didn’t need people to believe the whole thing was real, though, just part of it.

  Guys lose their tempers and sometimes things get real in the ring—most people never know it because it
just seems like sloppy wrestling. My idea was to create a moment in which the audience would wonder if what they were seeing was actually real. The finish of the Roderick match was something that legitimately happened to us. One night after a show, a bunch of us were hanging out in my hotel room and Roderick was drunk, his behavior growing more and more irritating as he jumped all over the place while I was lying in bed. I told him to get out of the room if he was going to be annoying, so he charged and sprang on top of me. I immediately put Roddy in an omoplata shoulder lock with my legs until he screamed (it didn’t take long), and then I let go. Gabe was in the room and saw the whole thing. He thought it was awesome, and later that week, he told me he wanted that to be the finish in our upcoming match. I agreed, although only if Roderick wasn’t drunk.

  So we did it. In the match, Roderick was chopping me so hard that my chest was bleeding. As lots of wrestling fans who’ve tried chopping each other know, it hurts. Chops make a loud, visceral sound, and people know they sting. So it wasn’t hard for fans to believe that with all the chops Roddy had given me, I was pissed off. Instead of the usual cavalcade of moves before the finish of a big match, we just started elbowing each other in the face really hard until Roddy nearly knocked me out. He went to jump on me and, just like in the hotel room, I instantly put him in the omoplata. Rather than the typical milking of the submission, Roderick tapped out almost immediately, rolling to the floor without selling anything. He was pissed off, I got up pissed off, and then I spit on him and said he was a “piece of shit.” People in the arena had no idea what had just happened. It looked as if, in the middle of a normal wrestling match, tempers flared and a fight broke out. That was exactly what I wanted.

  Weeks later, our rematch had a different buzz about it, and Roderick had gained even more support from the fans. The entire match was aggressive and hard-hitting. Even though the scars hadn’t healed from the first match, he chopped me until my chest was bleeding again. Finally I beat Roderick by putting him in a crucifix and elbowing him until he was knocked out, an idea I got from a Gary Goodridge fight in UFC. The referee had to stop me from elbowing Roderick after he was knocked out, and, in one night, we created a new way a match could end in ROH: a referee stoppage. The fans didn’t understand it at first, and some were pissed off, but you have to take chances sometimes—and this one made my matches ahead much more interesting.

  When I competed in Ring of Honor, my character was much different than how I’ve come to be known in WWE. Within WWE, I’ve constantly been portrayed as an underdog. In ROH, I wasn’t a small guy compared to the other guys; especially those last couple of years when I was the top guy, whomever I was facing was actually the underdog. One of the more popular things people would chant over and over again toward my opponent was “You’re going to get your fuckin’ head kicked in!” It originated in England for soccer and got popular for wrestling in Ring of Honor. My style was more technical wrestling, but brutal, incorporating a lot of MMA movements into what I did, like the repeated elbows or repeated stomps to the skull. Ring of Honor crowds saw me as a badass with a big beard and shaved head.

  Ring of Honor opened up 2006 with a hot interpromotional feud with a company called Combat Zone Wrestling (CZW). Each organization had its own passionate fan base, which really contributed to the success of this rivalry. CZW was known for doing extremely violent wrestling that incorporated a great many weapons in matches. By this point, using things like tables and chairs was commonplace in mainstream wrestling. CZW took things a step further. Instead of just putting somebody through a table, they would put somebody through a barbed-wire table that was on fire. They would hit people not only with chairs but with things like long fluorescent light tubes that shattered on impact. I even saw a guy turn on a weed whacker and use it on his opponent. Their fans loved it.

  Most of our fans, however, thought it was garbage wrestling and that the CZW wrestlers were vastly inferior to the regulars of Ring of Honor. On the flip side, a lot of CZW fans found technical wrestlers like me boring, and they didn’t like what they perceived to be Ring of Honor’s elitist attitude. With both companies based in Philadelphia, it was a perfect rivalry.

  It started off with some CZW wrestlers invading an ROH show and Chris Hero, one of their promotion’s top performers, challenging me for the ROH Title. In return, we invaded a CZW event when we were running a show across town the same night—the first time I’d ever been in the famed ECW Arena in downtown Philadelphia. A bunch of wild brawls broke out, including one in which ROH wrestler BJ Whitmer had a sheet of paper stapled to his forehead. The fans of each company were white-hot for the feud, leading to my match with Hero for the ROH Championship in Philadelphia on January 14.

  One of the hardest things in wrestling is getting the fans to care. I’ve had a lot of good technically sound matches in which nobody cared because there was nothing at stake, just another match where it didn’t matter who won or who lost. That wasn’t the case with me and Hero at Hell Freezes Over. We had a split crowd—half CZW fans, half ROH fans—who were excited as hell for this match and couldn’t wait to cheer on their respective guys. You could absolutely feel the electricity during our entrances. When we started off wrestling, trying to prove who was the better wrestler, the crowd was really into it. But then we kept wrestling … for almost thirty minutes. The more we wrestled, the more the crowd became disinterested. The fans wanted a fight, and what ended up being a long, scientific wrestling match should have been a hate-filled brawl.

  You need to know when to wrestle and when to fight. That night in January 2006 was a time when I chose the wrong option. I’d say that match was my biggest failure as Ring of Honor Champion.

  In 2006, ROH made a great business decision by running shows in WrestleMania’s hosting city the two nights prior to WWE’s mega-event. WrestleMania brings in dedicated, hardcore wrestling fans from all over the world every year, so while they were all in town, even people who’d only heard about Ring of Honor on the Internet could come watch a show. It led to big business for ROH, and they’ve done it every year since.

  That year, WrestleMania 22 was in Chicago, one of the cities with the most ROH fans. Our first show, on Friday, had more than a thousand people, and they seemed to really love it, with the exception of how long the show was. Gabe wanted me and Roderick Strong to tease an hour-long draw but have me beat him right before the sixty-minute time limit. It was a great idea, but the problem was that the show started at 8 P.M., and by the time Roderick and I went to the ring, it was already after midnight. The full show had already been going on for four hours! The crowd was tired, and I could see people leaving midway through our match. (I couldn’t help but think, I wish they would have done that for the Aries match.) Yet we got through it and the crowd gave us a polite applause after we wrestled for fifty-five minutes, ending the show at 1 A.M.

  The following night was way better, and we had a record-setting attendance for an ROH show, with over 1,600 people. I wrestled former WWE, WCW, and ECW star Lance Storm, who was coming out of retirement, for the ROH Title in a fun match. Nobody in the crowd left during it, so I considered that a huge success.

  When I’d returned from England a year before, I’d moved back in with my mom and enrolled in Grays Harbor Community College in Aberdeen for the fall quarter. Now, in the middle of the winter quarter, Ring of Honor presented me with another opportunity.

  I had a chance to go from student to instructor (again) when they offered me the role of trainer at the Ring of Honor School they’d opened in Philadelphia. When it initially opened, the wrestling school’s first trainer was CM Punk, but he got signed by WWE. Austin Aries was the next trainer, but then he got signed by TNA. I’d be the third trainer since the school’s inception, and despite knowing I wasn’t the best trainer while in APW, I assumed that I would be better some four years later after amassing so much more experience.

  My apartment would be paid for, and I’d also make a commission on any students who attended.
Besides that, my sister had moved to a place in Pennsylvania about ninety minutes from where I’d be living. So I finished the winter quarter at Grays Harbor, and in April 2006, I drove the nearly three thousand miles from Aberdeen to Philly.

  Much to my chagrin, I was no better at training people to wrestle in 2006 than I was in 2002. Nobody stuck with the class more than three weeks. I constantly asked my students to come in with things they wanted to work on, and they rarely would. I don’t chalk that up to them being complacent, though; it was still the problem of me not being able to inspire them. In a coaching role, inspiring people to want to get better is often more important than teaching them techniques. And I was no good at inspiration.

  In summer 2006, I had my first encounters with one of my all-time best opponents, an English wrestler named Nigel McGuinness. Outside of the ring, I enjoyed being around Nigel because he was superintelligent and had a great self-deprecating sense of humor. He and I became exceptionally good friends, and the tremendous chemistry we developed carried over into the ring, where I had some of the greatest matches of my career against him. The most memorable bout was at a show called Unified, which was Ring of Honor’s first event in England.

  Our contest at Unified was a unification match to merge the promotion’s top two titles: the ROH World Championship and the Pure Championship—which, created in 2004, was essentially the same as WWE’s Intercontinental Title. In Ring of Honor, the Pure Title and its defenses had unique rules, like limited rope breaks and no punches to the face; plus, the championship could change hands on count-outs or disqualifications. Nigel was the Pure Champion for almost a full year and had even beaten me, the ROH World Champion, by count-out in Cleveland, Ohio, using the distinct rules to his advantage. Nigel was traditionally a bad guy, but that night in Liverpool, he was incredibly popular with his fellow Englishmen. The crowd was passionately behind Nigel, cheering him on the entire match and booing me every chance they got.