Daniel Bryan recently spoke with Inside The Ropes; you can read a few transcribed highlights and watch the full clip below:
(Transcription credit to Bill Pritchard for Wrestlezone.com)
Daniel Bryan on feuding with Big Cass:
I’m a big believer—I know that everybody wants to see the big matches—I would have loved to have come back and gotten right into the big matches. We did a match with me and AJ Styles on Smackdown, but especially now with the brand split—Samoa Joe, Shinsuke Nakamura, all of these things. But I also think you need to build to those. I’m somebody that’s always been, whether it’s been here or Ring Of Honor or whatever, I’ve worked hard at helping to bring new guys up. The idea of the old-timer who is trying to ‘keep his position’ and hold everybody down… I don’t think that works. I don’t think that’s sustainable and I think we need to build everybody up, and if everybody seems like Superstars, then the whole company is more fun to watch. I’ve actually enjoyed—I don’t enjoy getting booted in the face—I enjoy the challenge of wrestling somebody who is that big and newer, that sort of thing. I think it’s a good opportunity to show everybody what he can do. It’s also fun for me to go ‘OK, what do we have here?’
Bryan comments on other challenges he’s faced, and recalls his first match with Dean Ambrose:
I love—one of the things that I miss as an independent wrestler—is wrestling people that you don’t know very well. That’s a test to how skilled you are. Here’s this guy that you don’t know—first time I wrestled Dean Ambrose—it was on a Wednesday, and my flight was delayed. I’m getting dressed in the car on the way to the show. I have to go straight from the car, and it’s freezing cold, in my gear, so I’m changing with these guys that I never met before. I’m getting naked in the back of their car putting my stuff on, and I go straight from the car to the ring to wrestle Dean Ambrose, who I’ve never met before. That’s a real test of your skill. How good are you, how good is [the opponent]? When I wrestled Ambrose I didn’t know what I was going to get. I wrestled him and I was like ‘this guy is really good! Who is this guy? How have I not run into him before?’ So, I like that kind of stuff.
