The fans put him into the main event of WrestleMania.
AlternativeNation.net recently conducted an interview with Daniel Bryan concerning his return to the ring, his future and his unlikely rise to stardom.
On his new ring style:
“I will, but not necessarily because of my injury. It’s something where your style has to constantly evolve. I like to look at wrestling as the most artsy of all the martial arts. It’s a very creative process, what we’re doing is artistic creative combat. So as such, it needs to evolve. Being able to sit at home for the last 8 months and watch the product, and I see things where there’s too much of this, or there’s not enough this, and here’s what I can bring to the table that’s different, and more exciting for the fans. So yes, my style will be changing. Will it be any easier on my neck? I have no idea (laughs). Yeah, my style will be changing, but it’s not necessarily going to be physically easier.”
On Triple H & NXT:
“I have never actually talked to him about his vision for the future of wrestling, and that is actually something I should talk to him about, because we think a lot alike in a lot of ways. I like what he’s done with NXT, I think NXT is an awesome show. That last special that they did was an awesome product. I think Hunter is very intelligent wrestling wise, like he knows wrestling, he knows what works wrestling wise. I’m not exactly sure what are his ideas, and what aren’t his ideas within the WWE, but I want to say two of the most successful current acts that happened in the last year, like The Shield and the Wyatts, I think those are Triple H ideas, but I’m not exactly sure, as far as their execution and that sort of thing. The only way I can really gauge him is by what happens on NXT, and NXT is a wonderful product, it might be the best wrestling product out there. I love watching that show, and I think they’ve chosen some pretty awesome guys to be the stars of that show: Sami Zayn is incredible, Adrian Neville is incredible, Finn Balor is incredible, Hideo Itami, who used to be KENTA, and I wrestled on the independents and Japan, he’s incredible. So they’ve got some incredible talent down there, and they’re doing some really good stories.”
Grabbing Vince McMahon’s “Brass Ring”:
“You know it’s funny, because one of the things that he had mentioned was, he said something about the Millennials not having any ambition, right. It’s funny, because the WWE does this personality test with some of their more successful superstars, where they rank you on all of these scores, like your desire for power, and your personality, and all that kind of stuff. One of the things they ranked was ambition, and it’s funny, because in this personality assessment, I got the lowest score for ambition that the lady had ever seen. So they do it on a percentile basis, so from 0 to 100, I was in the bottom 1 percentile of ambition.
(Laughs) It’s funny because the lady was like, ‘How on earth are you so successful given that you seem to have no ambition?’ I said, ‘Well, that’s where there’s a flaw on the test. I have no ambition for what society says is important as far as things like money, and all that kind of stuff.’ What I am ambitious about is I want to be the best wrestler that I can possibly be, and I think there’s some sort of mistake in generations, as far as what he thinks as far as our generation lacking ambition. Our generation just wants different things than what his generation wants, and I think that’s a societal thing as well. There’s an older generation of people who say, ‘No, you guys should want this, you guys should want this, you guys should want this.’ Whereas our generation, a lot of us say, ‘No, we don’t want that, we want something different, and a lot of the things that you guys wanted, are the reason that the world is messed up. We need to change our value system.’ So that’s it, that’s a very different take on what’s going on.
But people do need to stand up and say, ‘No, this isn’t what I want, I want to do this. This is me, this is how I want to present myself on television. This is how I want to be within WWE, this is how I view professional wrestling, this is what I would like it to be.’ People have to have the courage to come up and say that. But the hard thing is, he was talking about the Attitude Era and how things were different, well things wouldn’t have been that much different if there wasn’t a WCW. Like guys could say, ‘Hey, I don’t want to do this. If you want to fire me fine, because I’m going to go to WCW and make just as much money.’ That doesn’t exist right now. It’s people who are okay with like, ‘Hey, my life without WWE, is as good as my life with the WWE.’ They have to be able to say, ‘Okay, if I’m going to say this is what I want to do, or else I’m taking my ball and going home.’ They have to have some sort of plan for when they take their ball and go home, they have something else to do, which is hard, especially when you have a family, and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, I have very interesting thoughts on that whole podcast. It’s a very interesting look into the mind of Vince McMahon, so it was fascinating.”
And how the fans changed WrestleMania 30:
“So I was never supposed to be in that match (Batista versus Randy Orton at WrestleMania 30), and the crowd reactions are what forced me to even be given that opportunity. I was surprised that the crowd was so vocal, because it was clear when Batista came back that he was supposed to be the returning hero. He was going on to main event WrestleMania against Randy Orton, and that was the big plan, but the fans changed that plan. That’s one of the amazing things about WWE that doesn’t happen in any other sport, or any other area of entertainment, is how much power the fans have. The fans literally changed the course of the biggest wrestling event of the year just through their actions, just through making their voices heard.
I wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near the top of the card. I think I was scheduled to wrestle Sheamus, and probably be 5th or 6th match from the top, and maybe get a 10 minute match if we were lucky, but because of fan support, all of the sudden now I’m doing 2 matches and I’m in the main event of WrestleMania. I kind of had thought that the fans might react the way that they did as far as booing him and cheering for me, but in no way shape or form did I expect it to be as vocal as it was. It turned into a transformative amount of cheering, you don’t get anything like that in any other form of entertainment or sports, so it was pretty incredible.”
