Daniel Bryan Names Wrestlers He Wants to Face Outside of WWE

Daniel Bryan sat down with Bleacher Report ahead of Sunday's Fastlane pay-per-view and was asked a [...]

By Connor Casey

Daniel Bryan sat down with Bleacher Report ahead of Sunday's Fastlane pay-per-view and was asked a pretty important question — if he wasn't still in WWE, who would he want to wrestle. Bryan was a pillar of independent wrestling back in the 2000s and has been with WWE (minus that brief departure in 2010) since 2009. An entire generation of talent has sprouted up in the 12 years since, so Bryan's list was pretty long.

"[New Japan's Kazuchika] Okada, from the time I got to WWE until now, he's gone from someone you didn't know much about to one of the best wrestlers in the world," Bryan said. "I've actually wrestled Shingo [Takagi], and he's fantastic. I always loved him in Ring of Honor, and I wasn't even 30 years old yet, but for whatever reason, I wrestled Seth Rollins in one of his first big singles matches in Ring of Honor, and it was really the story of the veteran versus the young up-and-comer. I've always loved doing that sort of thing and those kinds of matches."

He then moved over to AEW and WWE's NXT brand.

"When you look at the AEWs or whatever it is, somebody like Jungle Boy or MJF or Darby Allin," Bryan said. "Those guys are really interesting to me. When you look at NXT, he's not young, but I've always wanted to wrestle Kushida. That guy's great. Kyle O'Reilly and I, I don't know if we've ever wrestled. I've always wanted to do a singles match with him because he's gotten so, so good. Finn Balor and I have wrestled on the independents once or twice, and I'd love to do a match with him in WWE. There are just so many guys."

He kept going, mentioning Jonathan Greshman in Ring of Honor and a few WWE wrestlers that he's still missed, including Matt Riddle, Johnny Gargano and Ricochet.

"The problem is, guys are so good now and I like wrestling so much, so when you start naming names, then other names come up," he said. "In Ring of Honor, there's a guy named Jonathan Gresham. He's fantastic. I'd love to wrestle Jonathan Gresham. There are all these great guys. When people say that, one thing I don't like about that is that sometimes it minimizes how many guys in WWE I'd like to wrestle.

"I've never wrestled Matt Riddle one-on-one. I've never wrestled Ricochet one-on-one. I've wrestled Johnny Gargano one-on-one before I came to WWE, but it was mostly a comedy match where I got my pants pulled down and my butt was probably out for a full five minutes," he added.

Bryan will challenge Roman Reigns for the WWE Universal Championship at tonight's Fastlane event.

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