– Daniel Bryan was recently interviewed by Reyan Ali of The Classical. Here are some highlights:
You’ve had an enormous career in terms of all the people you’ve come across on the independents or in WWE. You must have seen hundreds of hours of matches. In terms of finishing holds besides your own, do you have any favorites and, on the flip side, ones you really dislike?
I still think the Superkick is the best finisher ever. It was just so good. There’s so many [favorites]. I think Antonio Cesaro’s finish right now is cool. I always loved the Piledriver, so an adaptation of the Piledriver is very awesome to me. I’ve always loved submission holds, so I love the Sharpshooter, that sort of thing. I love Dean Malenko’s Cloverleaf.
The things that I never really liked as finishers were the stuff that was wacky, stuff like the Von Erichs [who] did the Tornado Punch, you know what I mean? [Laughs] The Ultimate Warrior—even though he was my favorite as a kid—[had] the Press Slam, and then he’d hit the ropes a couple of times and give ’em the Big Splash, the Hulk Hogan Legdrop—stuff like that was all stuff [where] I was just like, ‘Eh.’ To be fair, I honestly always hated the Rock Bottom. To me, it was just like, ‘Uh, that’s weird and stupid.’
Considering the success of Total Divas and your big role on the show, what do you think of the idea of Daniel Bryan as a reality show star?
Oh my gosh, it’s so surreal. If you would have asked probably anybody in my high school who was the least likely person in our graduating class to be on a reality show, I probably wouldn’t have [been] the top as far as the least likely, but I would be up there in the top 10 percent, you know what I mean? [Laughs] Even my friends from the independents: ‘Hey, will Bryan ever be on a reality show?’ ‘No, he has no interest.’ It’s just very surreal. [The cameras are] not following me around, they’re following Brie around, so it’s not exactly the same thing. But [considering] just that I’m in it, my friends and family are like, ‘This is crazy.’ [Laughs]
Aside from what the cameras pick up, what’s your relationship with Brie like?
We very rarely get time off, so for us, it’s mostly just recovering from wrestling. A lot of times, I’ll leave on Friday and I don’t get home ’til Wednesday, so then I have the rest of Wednesday, which I’m exhausted [for], and then Thursday, [for] which I spend a lot of the day packing for the weekend. We don’t go on a lot of dates per se. Our lives are relatively boring in comparison to what you would think.
But when we do get some time off, like for Valentine’s Day [2013], we had like four days off, and we went to Sedona, Arizona, which is like a little piece of Heaven. We did some stargazing. We went hiking. We went on this guided spiritual tour thing. It was so much fun. It was beautiful. It was out in the mountains and all that kind of stuff. That’s kind of the thing that we’re into.
