#3 – Daniel Bryan, WWE Champion
It was a long, difficult road, but Daniel Bryan finally became WWE World Heavyweight Champion at WrestleMania 30. Never mind the few collective minutes he was WWE Champion in 2013 (multiple times) – this one mattered.
I don't want to sound like an elitist or a "wrestling hipster" but I've been a Bryan Danielson fan longer than I've been a Daniel Bryan fan. He was one of the few things that made me tune into Ring of Honor back in the day. While excited about his participation in the original NXT "reality game show", I wasn't sold on the way they presented him. Here was WWE, the biggest wrestling company in the world, taking one of the biggest indie stars to have come along in a decade, and feeding him loss, after loss, after loss.
My opinion of him (read: WWE's creative) changed when became a heel, incorporating the "NO!" chant into his gimmick, and hooking up with AJ Lee. He had some great matches with big guys you wouldn't expect to steal a show. His mic improved during that. Most importantly, the WWE fans caught on to him, and started to show real support for his character in the form of vehement hatred. WrestleMania 28 was brilliant. Whether it was engineered to bury or boost, Bryan became a star because of that 18-second loss.
Daniel Bryan really is – or rather, was – the WWE Champion the company never wanted to push. You saw that at the Royal Rumble, when they had no plans of using him outside of a curtain-jerker. You saw it in the way the fans reacted to Batista. You saw it in the way they reacted to Randy Orton vs. John Cena. The fans wanted Daniel Bryan, and management didn't believe it was a good idea. But Vince and Hunter, despite popular belief, understand when something needs to be done for the sake of making money. The story played itself out, Bryan took over Monday Night Raw, fought his way through Triple H, and went on to become WWE World Heavyweight Champion in the main event of WrestleMania 30.
