WWE superstar Daniel Bryan recently spoke with Bleacher Report to hype up tomorrow’s Fastlane pay per view, where the former WWE champion will challenge Roman Reigns for the Universal title in the evening’s main event. Highlights from the interview can be found below.
How he feels disappointed in himself because he was showing up with a bad attitude when he knew he could still wrestle:
If they were not going to let me wrestle, I was for sure gone. I had gotten cleared by so many doctors at that point and felt very confident in my ability to wrestle. I’m very thankful that…the frustrating part—I don’t want to say the frustrating part. But the part I’m disappointed in myself about is that I had a bad attitude about it. I don’t want to say I showed up to work with a bad attitude and was like, ‘Screw this place!’ As opposed to embracing it and really trying to do my best work, a lot of times I didn’t and just showed up to work. Even if I showed up to work with a smile on my face, I showed up in the back of my head thinking, ‘I just want to get home. I don’t want to be here.
Says watching an Ambrose and AJ Styles match was the one that really motivated him to get cleared:
It was really hard for me to watch other people do what I love up close and not be able to do it. The worst one was when I had to sit ringside for a Dean Ambrose vs. AJ Styles match and that was the one that broke me. AJ and I at that point hadn’t [fought]. He hadn’t come to WWE before I retired. Seeing those guys go out there, and they’re both great, I was like, ‘Man, I should be in there doing this with these guys.’ It really ate me up, and when I came home, I think Brie saw a different person as far as striving to prove. Because that was the thing: I had to prove that I was healthy as opposed to them trying to prove I shouldn’t be able to wrestle. Given the circumstances, that was the absolute right route they should have taken.