The leader of the YES! Movement and the former two-time WWE World Heavyweight Champion, and Smackdown’s General Manager, Daniel Bryan recently did a telephonic interview with Canada’s Brockville Recorder to promote this coming Sunday’s Pay-Per-View, WWE SummerSlam.
Bryan talks about a lot of things in the interview ranging; from his neck injury to his mental breakdown, his retirement, SummerSlam memories, and much more.Now before you continue reading further please, remember that we have kept the most interesting excerpts in here and not the entire thing because it’s a very long interview. Without any further ado let’s move on ahead.
Daniel starts off by talking about his post-retirement mental breakdown, Bryan says:
“I had to go out to Florida (to shoot Total Divas) and we're in John Cena's house for four weeks or whatever and there are cameras just on you all the time, I just had this horrible mental breakdown.”
Bryan adds further that he tried to get himself clearance from several different doctors so that he could have more proof on his side to prove that he was physically fit.
Bryan goes on to talk about people telling him to change his style of wrestling after he came back from his first injury:
“A lot of people have said, ‘Oh, you need to change your style, you need to change your style, you need to change your style. And that is very true. Steve Austin had this great conversation with me, it was during the time when I was still trying to cleared from my concussion stuff.”
“I wouldn’t have gotten to where I was if I didn’t have that style,” Bryan said, conceding that there “probably was a point where I could have changed it sooner, like when I came back from my neck surgery.
Realistically, my style isn’t what put me out, I ended up taking a really hard hit to the head. It had nothing to do with my style.”
Bryan then mentions that he’d tested out his neck after returning and actually wanted to wrestle Brock Lesnar:
“When I came back from my neck surgery — and I have this really bad habit, it’s like I’m a glutton for punishment — I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to see how strong my neck is and to see if it can still take some of this stuff.’ ”
“What I really wanted was I wanted a match with Brock Lesnar, that was my thing. But I didn’t want to go into the match with Brock Lesnar (having) that be the first time I ever take a German suplex (following) my neck surgery. So, I wrestled Luke Harper and he German suplexed me on my head and everybody was like, ‘Oh my gosh, why did you do that?!’ It’s because I have this mentality of, ‘Well, I don’t want to go in there against Brock knowing he’s probably going to give me one zillion German suplexes and not having taken a German suplex before and not having known that my neck was going to be ok.’ ”
Bryan mentions that before the entire Smackdown GM thing he was going to go to the University of Arizona in fall to get a biology and ecology degree. He also talks about his favorite SummerSlam moment:
“My favorite for myself at SummerSlam was the 2013 SummerSlam. I wrestled John Cena in the main event and that was the biggest moment of my career up to that point. Being able to be out there with John, and SummerSlam, other than WrestleMania, it’s our biggest event of the year, so being put in that spot of main event an that sort of thing was really special to me. That was my personal favorite moment.”
In the final moments, Bryan says that he’s back doing the thing that makes him happy, even though it’s not in the same role that makes him happier, but it’s a start
“I need to find something that I'm just as passionate about as wrestling and I don't know if this is it. I don't know if going really environmental and sustainable if that will inspire the same passion in me that wrestling did, but I was going to try. And then they just sucked me right back in,” he adds laughing
