WWE Smackdown GM Daniel Bryan spoke with PhillyVoice.com to promote tonight’s WWE Smackdown Live in Philadelphia, and below are some interview highlights:
On CM Punk’s fight at UFC 203:
“I did watch the fight. Punk and I have never been best friends or anything like that. I don’t even think I have his number in my phone, but I really support him in that fight. I was really hoping he would win. The reality is that even though he lost, he was dead on in his promo afterwards. It’s the whole thing with me and him, and guys like Sami Zayn and Neville even trying to wrestle. Right? It’s just this idea of you have this dream that everybody tells you that you can’t do, but you just keep going after it. Sometimes, you’re not successful, right? He wasn’t “successful” in the fight. But he fought a professional fight in UFC. That’s crazy! You know? It’s crazy and it’s awesome and he may have lost and he may have gotten beat up, but hey, he tried it. How many people would be afraid because of their ego to not even put themselves out there like that? I like to train jiu jitsu and I like to muay thai and the number of people who train all the time but won’t put themselves out there to even do like a tournament and nobody knows who they are. The ego part of you that says, ‘Well, if I go and I do it and I lose, what does that mean?’ Well, [Punk] went out and did it, right? He’s a huge public figure. I have the utmost respect for him trying to go do it.”
On what he thought when Styles finally signed with WWE:
“I didn’t know he was signed until he kind of showed up. I heard rumors or whatever. So there wasn’t that kind of like, ‘OK, they officially announced they’ve signed AJ Styles. Oh, no. What are they gonna change his name to?’ Whatever, you know. There was never that period.
“He’s so adaptable. He’s done short TV matches in TNA. And he’s done long matches. I know in WWE that he’s got the kind of style and kind of personality where I knew he was gonna do well. It was just a matter of how long it was going to take him before people within the company started to see how good he is. It was relatively quick.”
Thoughts on WWE’s main roster as a whole today compared to when he debuted in 2010:
“It’s interesting because WWE has evolved. I think part of that is Raw being three hours. You can’t have guys who don’t regularly put on really good matches. With a three-hour Raw, everybody has to wrestle more. If you’re just a decent wrestler, but you’re a really good interview guy, those guys in the past would be really protected, so they wouldn’t have to wrestle long matches all the time. Now Raw is three hours, so you have to wrestle two-segment matches nearly every week, and do a promo, and do this and that sort of thing. You have to have guys who are capable of doing it and making it still interesting every week. To me, that’s why you see a lot of the former independent guys doing really well. Like a guy like Kevin Owens. He’s a really good talker, he’s a really good personality, but he can also go out there and have great matches. That puts him in a good position to succeed there.
Nick was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and lived there until the age of 18, when he decided to pack his flack jacket and move to New York City.
