10 unexpected WWE World Champions

#8 Daniel Bryan

Bryan celebrates his first WWE Title victory

When Daniel Bryan entered the WWE, he was a favourite of the independent scene, regarded as an excellent wrestler in the ring but unable to really achieve much success in the big leagues of Vince McMahon’s corporation. How wrong everybody turned out to be as Bryan totally flipped the script on its head to win the World Heavyweight Championship from Big Show, under two years after his WWE debut.

Another Money In The Bank winner, his title victory was a popular and surprising one and whilst this did vault him up the card to a significant degree, Bryan would have to wait another year and a half before experiencing his most unexpected title win.

This came at Summerslam 2013, as John Cena personally selected Daniel Bryan as the Number 1 contender to his WWE title. In the months preceding Summerslam, Bryan had built up a huge amount of momentum, to the point where he was then the undisputed most popular guy in the company. Everybody knew this, but everybody also knew that it was the second biggest event of the year.

Surely, Daniel Bryan couldn’t possibly go over Cena for the title, on such a huge show, right? Wrong.

WWE and Daniel Bryan shocked the world that night, as Bryan debuted his Running Knee finisher to score a massive victory and become WWE Champion for the first time. The jubilant celebratory scenes that followed made for heart warming viewing, setting the stage for Randy Orton to unexpectedly ruin the party with his Money In The Bank briefcase.