The following are highlights of a recent interview with WWE Superstar Daniel Bryan from TheClassical.org:
On his relationship with Brie Bella: 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.
On what wrestling can learn from MMA and vice-versa: Okay, so there’s a lot of things that wrestling can take from MMA. One of the things that MMA does very, very well—and boxing does this, too—is creating personality profiles leading up to big fights, like the 24/7 stuff and the UFC Countdownspecials—promoting people as personalities and how they’re training and how important this particular fight is for these fighters. I think they do an incredible job with that, especially given that they don’t have the hours of TV time that we do on WWE.
For example, if you would have seen [something on] me and John Cena, one of the interesting aspects is how different we are and the different lifestyles we lead and how we train. He’s very strong at doing the Olympic lifts. Whenever we go somewhere and we’re doing some Olympic lifts, people will always comment, one, on how strong he is, and two, on how great his form is. He’s worked extensively on his Olympic lifting—snatches, clean-and-jerks, all that kind of stuff. If he wasn’t wrestling and focused exclusively on that, [he’d] probably [be] world-class. For me, I do train with Olympic lifting and that sort of thing, but I’d rather be kickboxing and grappling. That’s how I train for wrestling. Those kind of personality profiles would really enhance the company [if they would] really get a look at people as they’re training for a big match.
What MMA can take from us is a lot, especially [with] fighters after they win. ‘Hey, is there anybody that you’d like to fight next?’ and when they’re just kind of like [apathetic voice], ‘Oh, you know, just whoever Dana White wants me to face,’ and that sort of thing. No, man! That’s a chance for you to get yourself over or to make a challenge. I think more and more guys are starting to get that now, especially with how successful Chael Sonnen has been with just using his mouth. Even somebody like Quinton Jackson was such a big talker. Any time that you can add something to yourself and make yourself more marketable, that’s going to help you in the long run, and that’s going to help whatever company that you’re fighting for, whether it be boxing, MMA or that sort of thing.
They could probably even take some stuff from having exciting ring entrances or fancier ring gear. You see that a lot with boxing. You get those awesome robes.
Check out the complete interview online at TheClassical.org.