WWE SmackDown Live GM Daniel Bryan recently appeared Sam Roberts Wrestling Podcast to talk about his career. Here are the highlights.
On Talking Smack:
“My thing with Talking Smack is I want our talent to look really good. For example, Baron Corbin was on the show a few weeks ago, he was awesome. Did great and the key is-the show is not about Rene and I, we’re just host, but we’re there to bring stuff out of people, something to help them. Heath Slater and Rhyno were on this week, and they didn’t even need us there. They didn’t need Rene and I there, they were so entertaining, but part of our job, and this is something I am still trying to learn is to bring something out of it, but also leaving it on these guys, leaving it on Baron Corbin, don’t try to one-up him. When he says something and then challenge him a little bit, but then it’s like, man, he has a really good point, let’s just leave it like that. I don’t feel like I have done a one-up on anybody. Maybe in the first couple ones I might of, like when Eva Marie was on, I was like very new, but other than that, Renee and I actively make it about the people; overall we try our best though.”
On Brie Bella returning to WWE after her pregnancy:
She wants to have at least one more match. It was never about, Brie, I’m retired so you can’t wrestle anymore. It was, I have to retire, and then she would say, well, I want to retire too so we can do this baby-making process, but she doesn’t want to come back full time, but she wants that comeback story; she wants to prove herself. It’s her idea that she wants to have a baby and then come back to wrestling, and not just wrestling like, at an independent show, it’s like, I want to come back at the highest level. I want to come back to the WWE and that sort of thing. She really has that goal in mind.
On his somber demeanor on Total Bellas:
For most of my life, I’ve been very upbeat, but when the cameras are around you all the time, and that particularly for me that was a difficult time in my life, they were just there all the time and in there waiting for you to explode.
On not worrying about speaking his mind:
“Sometimes I just say things, and then sometimes in my earpiece someone is saying, “Why are you saying this??” It’s like, the reason why is because guys you used to do that before, like for example, during the Attitude Era, people would say, yeah, fire me I’ll go to WCW, or the territory area, I’ll go to a million places, now it’s like, yeah, fire me…where do you go now? Please don’t fire me, I can’t do anything else, nor do I know how to do anything else. Now I’m like a pool boy, Brie has her reality show; she’s an Executive Producer on Total Bellas, her and Nicole, they’re on Total Bellas, Total Divas, they’re Ambassadors for WWE; they’ve got this wine, they’re doing all this stuff, and then it’s like, well, what am I doing? I’m a GM and Talking Smack.”
