#2 Becoming an ROH ‘Founding Father’
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With the world of professional wrestling at its height during the early 2000’s, fans became increasingly hungry for something other than the WWF/WCW duopoly. Factions such as ECW and companies from Japan started gaining larger global audiences. There was also a new found interest in independent wrestling, which had previously held a reputation as reckless ‘backgarden’ wrestling, a million miles away from the glitz and glamour of the WWF.
Ring of Honour (ROH) Wrestling was officially founded in 2002, with Danielson as a recognised ‘founding father’ of the company. In an attempt to fill the void left by WWE’s purchase of ECW, Rob Feinstein’s promotion sought to cater for fans who enjoyed a more real-to-life style of the sport, one that embraced close fan interaction and concentrated on the action inside the ring as opposed to soap opera style backstage narratives.
The company has always enjoyed relative success, never quite reaching the level of the big players, but always offering an enjoyable alternative whenever fans tired of seeing the familiar WWF faces.
Bryan, along with stars like CM Punk, Samoa Joe and Tyler Black (Seth Rollins) first made names for themselves under the ROH banner. By the end of 2002, the WWE was left alone atop the wrestling mountain, which meant that wrestlers making an impact on the independent scene started to appear more and more attractive.
Bryan became ROH champion in 2005, quite possibly the ideal time, as this allowed him the space to get used to championship success and also leave the door open to a possible return to WWE if he managed to maintain his popularity with the fans.
His feuds over the title with the likes of Chris Hero and Samoa Joe are now the stuff of legend, and it wouldn’t be long before the WWE would come knocking once again.
Major rumor about recently released stars HERE
