Daniel Bryan recently sat down with Yahoo Sports for an in depth interview. During the interview, he discussed the change in his character and how he felt when he got the news that he was medically cleared to compete. Here are the highlights:
On Learning That He Had Been Medically Cleared To Return:
Announcing I was coming back really felt special to me because I was working so hard to come back and worked so hard to change people’s minds to allow them to let me come back. When I went out and did an interview saying I was back and then got attacked by Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens, there’s never been a happier man to get punched in the face than I was that night.
On His Heel Turn:
As soon as the decision was made I said to myself, I don’t want anyone to like me. Miz and I see things differently on a lot of different levels, but one of the things I respect about him is that when he’s a bad guy, he doesn’t try to get cheered. I really felt like if I embraced that kind of attitude [it would work]. I’m not going to be the “cool” bad guy, there’s nothing cool about me, I couldn’t be cool if I wanted to. Some people do that but then you’re not a bad guy, you’re just cool. That was my mindset.
On Why It Was Time For A Turn:
One of the things that I really felt was that after I came back, as a character, I was very stagnant. I felt like it was the same Daniel Bryan that wrestled in 2014 and I wrestled the same way because people had certain expectations as to what they wanted Daniel Bryan to be, both fans and inside the company.
It felt very stagnant and I was very excited to do something new and try some new things. The whole changing character allowed me to be whatever I want to be. It’s like a reset button. That’s a lot of fun.
On Using His Real Life Convictions For Story Line Purposes:
I think it’s all in the way that you present something. Nobody likes the be told what to do and nobody likes to be told that they’re the problem, so I think that’s where it stems from. You tell people that they’re the problem. Everybody that I’m looking at, we’re all the problem. When you tell people that, they don’t like it and they don’t like it because it’s true.
On Having Confidence In His Ability To Entertain:
I always have confidence in my ability to get booed and I always have confidence in my ability — if needed — to get cheered. One of the instances of that was wrestling Brock Lesnar at Survivor Series. Managing the expectations of needing to get people to cheer me when I’m beating up Brock Lesnar, but at the end of it I need people to boo me and that happened. I’ve always had that confidence when it comes to wrestling but a lot of that comes from experience.
On Wanting To Wrestle Younger Talent For Selfish Reasons:
It’s not this selfless thing, it’s actually a selfish thing. I want to wrestle the best guys on the planet. Some of those best guys are on ‘205 Live.’ We have Gran Metalik here and he’s one of the best luchadors in the world and he’s on that show. Man, would I love to wrestle that guy in a mask vs. hair match. That’s sometimes where my passion gets ahead of me.
On Not Wanting To Take Credit For A Shift In Focus To Smaller Wrestlers:
Some things were gonna happen naturally. Realistically, Rey Mysterio was doing this in 1996. Rey, Dean Malenko, Eddie Guerrero, they were changing perceptions of size back then. For a while, that whole movement took a step backwards before moving forward again like it is now, but it was going to happen anyway.
We have five hours of live television every week and who are the best people to fill that time? It’s going to be the people who can wrestle in the best and most entertaining ways. We live in a society where people don’t pay attention to something for long if it doesn’t interest them. Smaller guys are generally more exciting.
You can read the full Daniel Bryan interview by clicking HERE
Credit: Yahoo Sports.
