WWE: If CM Punk or Chris Jericho Isn't the Best in the World, Who Is?

When Chris Jericho faces CM Punk at WrestleMania 28, there will be more than just the WWE Championship on the line. 

Punk and Jericho will battle it out to see who can pin the other guy and truly live up to their self-given nickname. They will go toe-to-toe to see who is indeed “the best in the world.” 

The winner of this match will certainly come out on Monday Night Raw the next night and claim that his WrestleMania victory establishes him as the best wrestler on the planet, once and for all. But that might not actually be the case. 

While Punk and Jericho are the only superstars who consistently say they are the best, there are a number of other superstars who can lay claim to being the best in the world as well.

Just judging by his last three Mania matches, The Undertaker has a valid argument of being the world’s top wrestler, and after their stellar years in 2011, so do two other superstars: Dolph Ziggler and Randy Orton. 

Oh yeah, there’s also some guy named Daniel Bryan, who just so happens to be the World Heavyweight Champion and is, in fact, considered by many to be the best wrestler walking this Earth. 

So, who is really the best in the world? If not Punk or Jericho, who is the top overall performer in professional wrestling? 

While Ziggler has come on incredibly strong over the last year, he only has two particular WWE matches—against Punk on Raw last November and against Bryan at Bragging Rights in 2010—that really stand out as excellent bouts.

Meanwhile, Undertaker isn’t around enough, and you could make a case that Orton’s great 2011 was a largely due to a series of matches with a great opponent in Christian. 

That leaves one man as the challenger to Punk and Jericho’s “best in the world” title: Daniel Bryan. 

As is the case with Ziggler, Bryan doesn’t have a slew of phenomenal WWE matches like Jericho, Orton, Undertaker and Punk do. But of all the superstars I’ve mentioned, Bryan is the one who’s been given the fewest opportunities to do so in the WWE. 

Although Bryan won the Money in the Bank match last summer, it wasn’t until he won the World Heavyweight Championship last December that he was given more high-profile bouts, and even then, he was feuding with two guys who aren’t exactly known for putting on great matches: Big Show and Mark Henry.

Yet, the first time Bryan was given a big-time match with another great wrestler, he tore the house down with Punk in an absolutely fantastic bout on Monday Night Raw. 

It was right then and there that those who didn’t have the privilege of watching Bryan on the independent scene were able to say, “Wow. This guy really is as good as people say he is.” And good might be an understatement because Bryan was nothing short of amazing before making it big in the WWE. 

Here’s the list of awards he was given by the Wrestling Observer Newsletter before becoming World Heavyweight Champion: Best Technical Wrestler (2005-2011), Match of the Year (vs. Takeshi Morishima in 2007), Most Outstanding (2006-2010) and Most Outstanding Wrestler of the Decade (2000-2009.) 

That’s the impressive resume that Bryan racked up before he was even 30 years old, before he had the grand stage of the WWE to prove that he was even better than people thought.

Now that he is competing for the biggest wrestling company in the world as its World Heavyweight Champion, there really is no telling just how far he can go. 

I’m not saying that Bryan is undoubtedly the best in the world right now—Jericho’s done it longer, and Punk’s done it longer on the big stage—but if neither Y2J nor Punk is the best that pro wrestling has to offer, Bryan probably is.

Drake Oz is a WWE Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter and ask him any wrestling-related questions on Formspring.