5 Former ROH World Champions who have achieved success in WWE

#2 Bryan Danielson ( Daniel Bryan)

Bryan is one of the best in-ring performers of this generation

One of the most beloved superstars in WWE history, the former American Dragon was one of the founding fathers of Ring of Honor. Daniel Bryan worked for the promotion from 2002 to 2009. Bryan competed in the main event of ROH's very first event, The Era of Honor Begins, on February 22, 2002, in a three-way match against Christopher Daniels and Low Ki.

Bryan's matches against the likes of Homicide, Austin Aries, Takeshi Morishima, and Kenta catapulted ROH to worldwide prominence. The American Dragon won the inaugural Survival of The Fittest tournament in 2004. After numerous failed attempts, Bryan finally won the ROH World Championship by defeating James Gibson at Glory by Honor IV on September 15, 2005.

However, in our opinion, Bryan's greatest rival in ROH was none other than Nigel McGuiness. McGuiness and Bryan first faced off on April 29, 2005, a match where both Bryan's ROH World title and McGuiness' ROH Pure title were on the line. The match ended in a count-out after McGuiness laid out Bryan with a steel chair, thereby winning the match and retaining his title but failing to capture Bryan's ROH World Championship.

The duo had another unification match at ROH United in Nigel's native, England, in what many consider to be one of the most brutal matches in ROH history. Bryan won the match after hitting an already bloody and battered McGuiness with stiff elbow shots, forcing the referee to end the match and declare him the winner.

At Final Battle 2006, Bryan dropped the ROH World Championship to Homicide, ending his fifteen-month long reign as the promotion's top dog. Bryan's final match for the company on September 26, 2009, at Glory by Honor VIII: The Final Countdown where he defeated his longtime rival, Nigel McGuiness.

Bryan's victory at WrestleMania 30 where he defeated Batista and Randy Orton in the main event to win the WWE World Heavyweight Championship will go down in history as one of the greatest WrestleMania moments of all time.

After a series of concussions forced him to retire from in-ring competition in 2016, Bryan would make a triumphant return to the squared circle just two years later at WrestleMania 34. Bryan would capture the WWE Championship from AJ Styles and would hold it for the next four months. He would lose the title to Kofi Kingston at WrestleMania 35 in one of the memorable matches in Mania history. Bryan continues to be a central figure in WWE programming and is someone who has elevated a plethora of younger talents since his return in 2018.