by Daniel Bryan
Preparing for the match, I had ripped my mask on the cage wall to provide easy access to my skin beneath it. When the time came, I readied myself, then stuck the blade into my forehead and scraped it across. It didn’t hurt all that much, but what I did immediately notice was a very distinct sound, the sound of ripping. Instead of cramming it down my tights—which sounded crazy—I quickly handed the blade to the referee and instructed him to stick it in his pocket. Unfortunately, I only got one single drop of blood and nothing more than a scratch on my forehead, so I learned another valuable lesson that night for the future: have multiple razors on me.
Though all four of us tried to blade in that match, the only person who actually got good blood was Brian Kendrick. Our failure and poor plan, frankly, just reflected the stupidity of being a rookie and trying to do things that weren’t necessary. Like with anything else, you learn from experiences like this.
6
ROCK-N-SAKE CONNECTION
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2, 2014—8:42 P.M.
Contemporary apartment buildings line Fulton Street, a narrow city block with a cluster of trendy restaurants and bars, including Rock-n-Sake Sushi. Outside, a minivan cab pulls up and delivers Daniel Bryan and Brie Bella to their evening dinner destination. Brie, a WWE Diva turned reality TV star, glides out and instantly turns the heads of passersby. She’s followed by Bryan—affectionately referred to by Brie as “Sweet Face”—who hops out of the vehicle in his gray lace-up TOMS and plaid button-down, his signature outside-the-ring gear.
The couple enters the restaurant, spies the menu, and advances toward a table in the far back corner. Later, immersed in fairly loud pop music and dim lighting supported by neon jellyfish lamps overhead, Bryan explains it’s “not our kind of scene,” but the food—fresh fish and crisp salads—is good, with the Yelp reviews to support the claim.
Plate after plate of small dishes start descending upon “Braniel’s” table as the two get close for conversation and recaps of their respective days apart. They snap loose their chopsticks and dig in to a variety of shared specialties. Tuna tacos, cucumber salad, sushi rolls, gyoza, green tea, and a PB&J roll for dessert (remember: sweet tooth) are all slowly enjoyed by the duo in between conversation and giggling, like any other couple at dinner. They pause only for a WWE fan who discovers them and asks for a quick pic. (Beautiful Brie plays photographer, ironically.) To some, this interruption might be a faux pas, but “the People’s Couple” is happy to oblige.
After finishing his food, “Daniel-san” scrolls through his iPhone while Brie leans in to take a look, a glow from the device illuminating what’s easily the most gorgeous face in the restaurant. The days ahead will be fast and furious, as they know. They’re content tonight because they’re together.
I am not a natural meat eater. When I was a child, my dad would go hunting and bring home big deer and elk, so we’d have a freezer full of deer and elk steak. My mom would always cook it for dinner, but I never really liked it. I think it was the texture, but it could have also been that I’d see my dad hanging the carcass at his friend’s place. It was jarring to see the dead eyes of such beautiful creatures. I would shuffle the meat around my plate in an attempt to make it look like I ate more than I did, then go after the green beans and mashed potatoes.
Whenever it was up to me to make food for myself, I always went for things like peanut butter and jam sandwiches. I was a little spoiled in that regard because my mom always made homemade jam out of the raspberries in our garden, not to mention her homemade bread.
As I started trying to learn about building muscle, I read the fitness magazines, all of which told me I needed a high-protein diet filled with meat; chicken and tuna seemed to be their gospel, and it was preached in every magazine. I hadn’t learned to question the media yet, so I just did my best to gulp it down.
In 2004, when I met Austin Aries, I was surprised to learn he was a vegetarian. He was in great shape without eating any meat, and I really looked up to him for that. Separately, I switched from reading predominantly fiction books to predominantly nonfiction for the next several years, and all of a sudden, I had a growing awareness of the horrible condition animals were kept in within factory farms, as well as the substantial increase in carbon emitted in the production of meat, as opposed to plants. I found that when you get deep into science and world problems, a lot of issues start running together. In 2007, inspired by Aries and the books I was reading, I tried going vegetarian. Unfortunately, I didn’t do it correctly and ate things that were easy instead of eating things that were healthy. I’d eat tons of bread just to feel full. It took a toll on my body, both in the way I looked in my spandex and in the way I felt. I was exhausted all the time and had no energy, and after about four months, I thought vegetarianism just must not work for my body. Had I actually spoken with Aries about how to do it properly, or if I’d read a book on the subject, I’m sure I would have seen the error of my ways.
A few years later, in 2009, with all the hard grappling and kickboxing training I was doing, I ended up getting three staph infections. One isn’t so uncommon when you’re on mats all the time. They scrubbed the gym every day, but there’s bound to be bacteria on the mat with all the people coming in and out. But then I got a second infection and a third that December, which scared me because I had finally been signed by WWE and was just waiting for the call from them to come start. I worried that if they needed me for TV and I told them I couldn’t do anything because of my staph, they’d fire me without even being given an opportunity.
I thought it was strange that other guys at the gym who trained just as hard as I did, if not harder, didn’t seem to be getting any infections at all. It’s not as if there was a staph epidemic. So after the third one, I had a lengthy discussion with my doctor in Las Vegas. We discussed not only my staph infections—which he attributed to my weak immune system—but my elevated liver enzymes and high cholesterol as well. He suggested going vegan, with the theory being that meats, cheeses, milks, and some other foods take a lot of energy for the body to digest. By eliminating those things, I’d free up more of my body’s natural energy to fight off bacteria. If I did it, he expected me to see a huge improvement in my overall well-being, as long as I did it properly. This time I did.
My doctor gave me a list of books to read before switching to the vegan lifestyle. I read The China Study, Thrive, and Becoming Vegan—and they gave me a better understanding of how to eat to increase my health and keep my strength.
At first I had a really hard time with this new diet, but the longer I did it, the better I felt. It required a whole new way of eating, especially on the road. I would bring most of my own food, because oftentimes there would be nothing healthy and vegan to eat that had the protein I required. It was frustrating, especially after shows, when Sheamus and Ted DiBiase would eat fast food and all I had was a dried-out hemp bagel with almond butter on it. Sometimes all I wanted was just something warm, but there was very little available. Daytime food became frustrating for the guys, too, because finding a place that fit my needs was often difficult. There was a period when William Regal was riding with us as well, which made it harder because he needed to eat gluten-free. Between him avoiding gluten and me being vegan, the two of us were driving Teddy and Sheamus insane.
My diet also had implications for how people saw me. My first NXT match against Chris Jericho went really well and when Chris got to the back, he expressed to Vince McMahon what a great job I’d done. As Chris tells it, Vince responded almost in disgust, grunting and then saying, “Him? He doesn’t even eat meat!”
My family’s reaction to me turning vegan was just as funny, especially with my dad being such a big hunter and meat eater. Still, they were supportive and did their best to make me food when I was back visiting. For my birthday, my mom even went through all the trouble to substitute vegan ingredients into her pumpkin cake, my favorite of all desserts. She didn’t know much about veganism, but she tried to learn just for me.
> Despite the difficulties and frustration of finding food on the road, I felt the best I had in years. I had energy, slept better, and overall, felt pretty good. It helped that when I was living in Las Vegas there was a vegan place called Red Velvet Cafe that made amazing cupcakes. I worried that I wouldn’t have anything fun to eat on my cheat days, but I ended up having nothing to worry about, because those cupcakes were better than regular cupcakes!
My diet was based on fresh fruit and vegetables, and I used things like beans, quinoa, and tofu for my protein. Soy was the predominant source of available protein on the road; I was constantly in search of places that had unprocessed veggie burgers, and most of them had a large quantity of soy in them. Unfortunately, a lot of soy is genetically modified, and shortly after WrestleMania in 2012, I started getting really sick again. I couldn’t figure it out for a long time, but then we did a blood test and found out I had a severe intolerance to soy.
When I was home and cooking my own food, avoiding soy was easy. Being on the road, however, was a different story. I tried going soy-free on the road for a while but became more and more frustrated at all the vegan foods I could no longer eat, leaving me with no good alternatives for protein. I was drinking four or five vegan protein shakes a day, and the whole thing was driving me crazy. With a heavy heart, I made the decision to start adding some animal products back into my diet. It almost made me feel defeated, as if I had taken a stand but then failed.
7
WORK OF ART
THURSDAY, APRIL 3, 2014—10:58 A.M.
“Braniel” exits their hotel room and splits at the elevator; Brie greets some WWE fans en route to the salon, and Daniel arrives at his appointment for Active Release Techniques (ART) therapy in a quiet hotel suite turned therapeutic studio.
ÖKO water filtration bottle still in tow, Bryan consults with the practitioner, describing tenderness and various effects of the highly physical lifestyle of a professional athlete. He lies flat on the table—belly up first, then on his back—and the specialist uses hard pressure to break up scar tissue in overused muscles.
Bryan’s neck and limbs are swayed back and forth; he’s then locked up in what resembles a half nelson. And repeat. By session’s end, any initial discomfort yields loosening of the muscles. He’s primed for the next phase of today’s wellness: a workout.
Lance, Brian, Shooter Schultz, and I moved to Memphis in mid-June 2000, almost one year to the exact day that I left Aberdeen for San Antonio. Moving to Memphis was a little nerve-wracking for all of us, mostly because we had never been outside Shawn’s protective womb, as far as wrestling was concerned. Shawn was always very protective of us, and he treated us like his kids. There were a lot of things we didn’t know how to do that Shawn made sure we had help with, like getting our apartments or having his wife, Rebecca, take Lance and me to the passport office before we went to Japan. In Memphis we were forced out from under Shawn’s wing and had to learn to do everything on our own. It was probably about time. Brian, Shooter, and I got a three-bedroom town house together, and shortly after moving in, we went to Raw in Nashville and SmackDown in Memphis to show our faces.
We drove with Terry Golden, the promoter and owner of Memphis Championship Wrestling (MCW), which was the name of the developmental promotion. Terry was really nice to us, but it was a far cry from going to the shows with Shawn. The Raw in Nashville was the first time I met William Regal.
Regal was an intimidating figure, particularly to someone like me who’d been wrestling less than a year. He’s tall with a strong jawline, and he had a reputation for being a shooter, meaning he legitimately knew how to hurt you. He had started wrestling at age fifteen, doing shows at carnivals where he’d sometimes have to take on members of the audience. Regal came up the hard way and wrestled all over the world before coming to the United States to compete in WCW in 1993. What makes him even more intimidating is how he speaks very softly, sometimes so softly that you strain to hear him, and that he has the confidence of a man who knows what he’s capable of.
Regal was in WWE’s developmental system to prove he had kicked his pill dependency, which he is very frank and honest about in his book, Walking a Golden Mile. I have only known Regal since he’s been sober, so it’s hard for me to imagine him as the wreck he was prior to getting clean. Before I met him, I had heard the stories—how he pissed on a flight attendant and “shot on” (that is, used legitimate moves or holds on) Bill Goldberg in a live TV match, which wasn’t true. Being at MCW was Regal’s opportunity to prove he could stay sober, and if he did, WWE would bring him back to TV. Not only did he stay sober, but Regal also ended up being the most influential person in my career.
The William Regal I met was nothing like the man I’d heard stories about. He was soft-spoken and funny, and he had a genuine interest in helping anyone who wanted to be helped. Regal took to Brian and me right away when he saw how eager we were to learn. He introduced us to the European style of wrestling, which was heavily based on submissions holds, counters, and advanced mat-based wrestling—something I had never seen before, particularly as it became increasingly more difficult to find European wrestling video-tapes would work in a U.S. VCR.
At first the multiple trainers we had in Memphis—including Jim Neidhart and others—were guys under contract with WWE, helping out until they were either brought back to the main roster or let go. At one point, Regal brought in an English wrestler named Robbie Brookside, who’d helped train Regal himself, with the goal of finding Robbie a role as coach in Memphis. That was the first time I’d met Robbie, and, like Regal, he also became a very influential wrestler in my career.
Since I was trying to switch to a less risky style, Regal was the perfect teacher for me. He would go into detail explaining the finer points of basic holds, and why certain counters make sense and others don’t, given the intuitive visual intelligence people have about the human body. He opened up a whole new world of wrestlers like Johnny Saint and Mark “Rollerball” Rocco, who were great wrestlers, and the way Regal thought and talked about wrestling transformed the way I thought and talked about it. It made sense to me. However, as eager as Brian and I were to learn the European style, a lot of the other guys were not so keen on it. In the fast-paced, live-TV style of WWE, some saw the mat wrestling and counters as slow and relatively boring. They weren’t interested in the specifics of wristlock counters, nor were they receptive to Regal’s broader ideas that wrestling should make sense.
There were exceptions, of course, like this one guy named Reckless Youth, who was one of the more notable independent wrestlers before he was signed by WWE. I heard of him through Pro Wrestling Illustrated, where he would get publicity because he was known for having great matches all over the country. Like a sponge, he soaked up what Regal taught, and since he had years of experience on the independents, he was great at integrating it into his matches. The first several months I was in Memphis I ended up wrestling Reckless a lot, which was a great learning experience because I got to try out all the things Regal was teaching us with someone who had a better concept of what wrestling should be than I did. After every match, I would ask Regal what he thought, and he would point out things I did well and things I could have done better. Brian and I had also taken to trying to record our matches, which helped as well.
Unfortunately for us, Regal got called back up to WWE television not long after we arrived in Memphis. He had been there a year and had not only stayed sober but was performing on a whole other level. Regal had a match with Chris Benoit at that year’s Brian Pillman memorial show that blew my mind. It was a perfect example of how aggressive mat wrestling could work in the modern wrestling environment. After I saw it, I thought, Holy shit! That’s the kind of wrestling I need to be doing. Even though we were only in Memphis a couple of months together, Regal became my mentor, and he has remained my mentor ever since. He’s the person I go to for advice to this day.
We had a lot of wrestlers—a hodgepodge of people—coming in
and out of Memphis while we were there. We had guys like Mabel and the Headbangers, who had already been on TV. We had the Mean Street Posse, who were on TV at the time as stooges for Shane McMahon and were being taught how to wrestle (with the exception of Joey Abs, who already knew how but was down in Memphis anyway). We also had the developmental prospects trying to get their first shot at being on TV, which was the biggest group of us—Joey Matthews, Christian York, Charlie and Russ Haas, Rosey and Jamal (who ended up being Umaga), R-Truth (before he became K-Kwik), and countless others during the year I was there. Another talent down there was Molly Holly, who inadvertently brought a big change to the entire group and procedure in Memphis.
Before the four of us (me, Lance, Shooter, and Brian), I’m not sure who was responsible for setting up the ring, but shortly after we showed up, it became our job, presumably because we were so new to the business and needed to pay our dues. We usually had at least three shows per week, so on those days, we’d get to the building early to assemble the ring and then stay late to tear it down. That continued until Nora Greenwald, who went on to become Molly Holly, came down to Memphis. She had just come from WCW and wasn’t going to be in Memphis very long, so she had no reason to be worried about who was handling the ring construction, but when she saw that we were doing it and nobody else was, she offered to help at the end of shows. Shortly thereafter, someone from the WWE talent relations office was at the show, and when he saw Nora helping build the ring, he instantly asked why she was doing it. Terry explained that it was just supposed to be the four of us doing it and Nora had just volunteered. When word got back to the office, they started making everybody—main roster refugees and new faces alike—work on the ring. Needless to say, people weren’t happy, especially since MCW was a relatively demoralizing organization in the first place.