Daniel Bryan was recently interviewed by GQ.com about his World title run and 18 second title loss at WrestleMania 28.
After Bryan discussed the “surreal” feeling on the Raw after WrestleMania when the crowd was chanting for him and chanting “Yes!” throughout the night, GQ asked Bryan why he felt the hardcore fans were supporting him.
“I feel like part of it was a backlash against how short my match at WrestleMania was,” Bryan said. “A lot of it is that people like to boo me, but they kind of like me. They don’t want bad things to happen to me, like an 18-second loss at WrestleMania, especially the hardcore fans, which is mostly who comes for WrestleMania. People come from all over the world. They travel to WrestleMania, and a lot of those people know my story, how long it took me to get a WrestleMania match. And then for my first one to be an 18-second loss, it actually generated a lot of anger.”
“I was World Heavyweight Champion for four months. I wanted to go out there and steal the show,” Bryan said. “I was really looking forward to going out there and showing everybody what I can do on the biggest stage of them all, and then I just wasn’t able to do it.” Bryan added, “Losing the World Heavyweight Championship in 18 seconds, storyline or not, is going to anger somebody. If you’ve been champion for four months and you lose it in 18 seconds on what’s kind of a cheap shot, you’re going to be a little bit angry. I’d like to amp up the more aggressive side of my character in that sense.”
When he was asked about the WWE’s grueling travel schedule, Bryan noted the most draining part of WWE’s schedule is “that there’s not a break.” He said wrestlers can’t get rest to let their bodies heal unless they get hurt, “and none of us want to get hurt.”
Asked if that makes him long for the independent scene schedule, Bryan said, “There are positives and negatives to both. I wanted to come to WWE party for personal accomplishment. I’d done essentially everything I could do on the independent scene, and I wanted to see how far I could get in the WWE. But also, you can only do this for so long, and at some point you have to try to save enough money to retire or at least to put yourself into a position to do something else.”
Bryan added that what he misses the most about the independents is his personal friendships. “In the WWE, it’s such a competitive atmosphere. There are only a few top spots, and then the rest of them are independent spots; you don’t really create the bonds and friendships that I had on the independents,” Bryan said.
You can read much more about Bryan and his incredible year at GQ.com
