Yes!
Page 15
Eye-patched Bryan faces Takeshi Morishima in Chicago, 2007 (Photo by George Tahinos)
In 2007, Morishima and I had four matches, and Gabe and I worked together on the story to make sure each showdown built upon the last. I had also learned from the Chris Hero debacle the year before. After Morishima attacked my eye in Chicago, it became a violent and bloody feud. The third match was under twelve minutes and ended in a disqualification because I repeatedly stomped Morishima in the testicles. Usually Ring of Honor crowds hated disqualifications, but they cheered this one because it was a moment of vengeance against Morishima, who, in their eyes, got what he deserved.
My final match of the year against Morishima was taped in December for a pay-per-view called Rising Above, and given the previous match’s disqualification outcome, this one was held under “relaxed rules.” At under six minutes, this was a short, violent sprint. We were going to war. I bled after Morishima threw a table at my head, and somewhere toward the end of the quick match, one of the Japanese giant’s clotheslines knocked me out. When I watched it, I could see the shift in Morishima’s attitude from wild monster to concerned colleague. Our referee, Paul Turner, didn’t know what to do; I was out of it, and this was for pay-per-view. He was in a tough position as the official: He didn’t want to mess up the booking, but he also wanted to protect me as a performer if I was hurt.
The next thing I remember was being on Morishima’s back and using the opportunity to elbow the shit out of his face. The big man didn’t have much problem getting back to being a monster after that. The calamity continued as we both attacked the referees who were trying to break us apart. The announcer declared the finish as a double disqualification, but they couldn’t ring the bell because I’d taken it and attempted to gouge out Morishima’s eyes with the bell hammer, while I wildly screamed out that I was going to “blind this son of a bitch!”
After the match, I was in bad shape. My head hurt, and I couldn’t shake the dizzy feeling. Unfortunately, on that same show, Nigel—who by this point was the ROH World Champion after beating Morishima—received a concussion as well when the back of his head hit the barricade in a match against Austin Aries.
Earlier in the year, Nigel had told me I needed to read former WWE wrestler Chris Nowinski’s book Head Games: Football’s Concussion Crisis, which discussed the dangers of concussions in football and other contact sports. It specifically talked about people getting early onset Alzheimer’s disease and dementia due to head injuries. Reading it scared the shit out of both me and Nigel. One of the things Nowinksi emphasized in the book is that it takes time for the brain to heal and that in order to prevent long-term damage, it’s important to not rush getting back into action after a concussion. Of course, in almost all contact sports, acknowledging that you are hurt and that you have to recover goes against the ingrained mentality. Wrestling is no different.
The following night at the Manhattan Center, Nigel and I were supposed to be in big matches, but we both knew we needed to take the day off. Nigel, smartly, did. I, however, did not. I wrestled over twenty minutes in a four-way elimination match in the semi-main event. My head wouldn’t stop pounding for the next several weeks.
Despite moments like this, I loved being an independent wrestler. One thing I really enjoyed was consistently being able to wrestle new people. A lot of times, I’d go to a show and not know a single person there, including the person I was scheduled to wrestle. Sometimes I’d show up and someone I hadn’t seen in years would be there, which would make my day.
On one occasion, I was booked for a rare Wednesday show in the Midwest. I flew from Seattle to Chicago, then had a two-hour drive to the small town I wrestled in that night. My flight was heavily delayed, which set me back a bit in getting to the show on time, so I called and spoke with the promoter. Given my expected arrival time, it became clear that I was going to end up going straight from the car to the ring for the main event. To make matters more interesting, I’d never wrestled my opponent before, and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever even met him. I was also going to need to get changed in the car, and in the middle of winter, it was pretty darn cold to be half-naked in your vehicle.
I pulled into the parking lot a solid three minutes before my music was set to play. I walked into the lobby of what appeared to be a VFW hall and stood there in, essentially, my underwear until it was time to go. I borderline dreaded doing the match, because there are a lot of horrible, unsafe wrestlers out there, and I hadn’t even talked to the guy I was wrestling by the time my music hit, as I walked to the ring from where the fans came in.
What happened next was a surprise. Without having even spoken, my opponent and I wrestled a good basic match. The longer we went, the more impressed I was. I was a relatively big star on the independent scene by this point, but he didn’t even seem nervous. Quite the opposite, really: He was confident that he knew what he was doing and confident that what he was doing was good. His name was Jon Moxley, and he’d go on to become better known as Dean Ambrose in WWE.
I had another surprise in early 2008 the first time I wrestled Tyler Black, who is also now in WWE as Seth Rollins. Rollins had come into ROH a couple of months prior to our collision, mostly participating in tag matches and even winning the ROH Tag Titles. I had seen his matches, and I respected his athletic ability and poise in the ring. His trunks were too small, but I could look past that. I really looked forward to our match. Truthfully, we needed some new guys fans would accept as main-event talent in ROH, and Gabe thought Rollins had “it.”
Gabe knew what he was talking about. In the ring that night, Rollins made an impression on me and the entire ROH crowd. Even though we weren’t in the main event, they titled the DVD Breakout because of Rollins’s performance in our match, and I was happy to be a part of it. After that, he and I ended up having a series of matches, my favorite of which took place in Detroit. He gave me a powerbomb into the turnbuckle and the whole thing broke, adding chaos and unpredictability to the match. Instead of getting flustered, he improvised, and that match was one of the best I had that year.
12
“YES!” FOR THE MASSES
FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2014—11:04 A.M.
Across the spectrum of media personalities he’s encountered, Daniel Bryan’s been asked nearly every question imaginable asked in countless languages. He’s also been asked to recite lines from the “#SELFIE” song, rapidly rattle off excessively colorful DJ names for shout-outs, and, of course, strike a “Yes!” or three. The tally is fifty-four total uses of the word “yes” in chant by the time he’s through—culminating with a nine-time succession along with a gaggle of the morning’s media correspondents. It’s clear that in any dialect, Bryan’s signature word (and its Movement) have strength.
“The ‘Yes!’ chant gives fans a way to vocalize their feelings about me not getting what, in their minds, I deserve. They want to see me succeed,” Bryan details. “In my career, the most important thing I’ve ever said ‘yes’ to is following my own dreams, as opposed to the dreams of other people. I said ‘yes’ to pursuing my dreams of becoming a wrestler, which is mildly impractical for someone who’s five foot eight and from Aberdeen, Washington. You’ve heard it a thousand times before—‘follow your dreams’—and it’s the only reason I’m here right now.”
Yards away, the exhibits are unmanned within the sprawl of WrestleMania Axxess, giving Bryan free rein to explore. In a wide display lined with mannequins posed in vintage gear like the Heartbreak Kid’s signature chaps, Bryan rediscovers a memory from his past. He relives the first pay-per-view he ever watched back on March 31, 1996. WrestleMania XII was an event in which a lingerie-swathed Goldust clashed with “Rowdy” Roddy Piper in a Backlot Brawl and “Big Daddy Cool” Diesel fell to the Deadman. But more importantly, it housed the clash that countless current Superstars claim is their favorite ’Mania bout of all time: Bret Hart versus Shawn Michaels in a sixty-minute WWE Iron Man Match. A former pupil of HBK, the “Yes!” Man has studied th
is and other classics over the course of his career, which he hopes to redefine at WrestleMania 30. Bryan continues along the display to find images from WrestleMania X and others, recalling instances like the Hit Man’s WWE Championship–winning double-duty in 1994. These all serve as inspiration for the contender who may end up in two all-important battles on the Grandest Stage of Them All.
At the end of his explorations, Bryan can’t deny the heavy eyes glaring at him from overhead on a series of immense banners featuring WrestleMania 30’s top gladiators. Positioned across from one another just as they will be days later on Sunday, a massive Triple H and Daniel Bryan linger atop a long Axxess hall passageway. The only thing bigger will be the actual clash itself.
From where he stands, just forty-eight hours lie between Daniel Bryan and the Game—the “Yes!” Movement and The Authority. He marches out from under the symbolic shrouds and toward the exit.
“I’m very confident in my ability to compete in two matches in one night,” he asserts, describing the many single-night tournaments he’s experienced in the past. “That kind of accomplishment will make me worthy of all these cheers and the adulation.”
On June 7, 2008, I got the first of the two phone calls I ever had from Vince McMahon. I was in my hotel room in Hartford, Connecticut, where we’d just done a show for ROH. At first, when he introduced himself, I laughed because I thought someone was ribbing me. Vince McMahon has a very distinct voice, one that many people are good at imitating. What initially made me suspect it might actually be him was that he said he had been speaking with Shawn Michaels.
Two weeks earlier, Shawn had called me, and it was the first time we had talked in several years. He asked how I was but quickly got to the point. He was in the middle of a feud with Chris Jericho, and they were getting Lance Cade involved in the story because Shawn had trained him. They thought getting me involved, too, would be an interesting twist; I could potentially come in beside Shawn, then turn on my onetime teacher to form an alliance with Chris and Lance. Shawn didn’t try to pressure me at all, but he explained it would be a great spot for me to come into, if I wanted to go to WWE—something I hadn’t even thought of since 2005. He said that he knew, from speaking with William Regal, that I liked the independents and that I preferred being more of a “starving artist.” (This was the first time I’d heard that in reference to me, and it kind of made me proud, since I never aspired to be wealthy and it was mostly the artistic form of wrestling that I truly enjoyed.) We had a good conversation, and I expressed that I’d be interested if we could work things out with ROH, with whom I was still under contract.
It was most certainly the real Vince McMahon on the phone. He said Shawn had spoken highly of me, and then he told me he’d like to have a meeting with me in Oakland, California, that Monday before Raw.
I mentioned that I could meet him that day if he wanted, noting that I was in Hartford, Connecticut, which I confused with Stamford, where WWE Headquarters is located. I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t just meet me that same day. It was kind of embarrassing, though Vince never pointed out my stupidity, which I only realized when we passed Stamford on the way from Hartford to our show in Newark, New Jersey. That all aside, I agreed to the meeting in California.
In hindsight, I should have just had them fly me to Oakland from Newark. Instead, I flew home from Newark to Seattle, then had to fly from Seattle to Oakland some six hours later. I needed that time, though. After talking to Regal, I thought I should get a suit to meet with Vince, and all I had was workout clothes, so I went to a department store near the airport. My mom was nice enough to bring me new workout clothes so I could switch everything out. I bought a cheap suit with a cheap shirt and equally cheap tie, packed up my stuff, and headed down to Oakland.
I met with Vince on Monday and was very uncomfortable. Wearing the suit didn’t help, as I was awkward in it, which is especially noticeable in the presence of people who wear them so easily. That wasn’t the only thing. Almost as soon as he saw me, Vince seemed taken aback that I was the one Shawn had talked so much about. I’m not sure if it was because of my size or just because of how plain I look, in general. And my personality didn’t seem to help things. Our conversation went a little something like this:
“Shawn says you’re very good,” Vince said.
“Yeah, I’m OK,” I replied.
“Just OK?” he asked.
“Well, yeah,” I very casually stated. “I’ve got a match tonight if you’d like to see.”
Knowing Vince a little better now, I could see how he would have hated that. He wants people who will say, “No, I’m the best!” And not just say it—believe it. But except during promos, I wouldn’t say that then and I wouldn’t say that now. Some people think I’m good, some people don’t; I let people decide on their own, which is not a top-guy attitude, at least not to Vince.
We talked a bit longer, and I explained that I was under contract with Ring of Honor but had their full blessing in coming to see him. He asked me if I wanted to come wrestle for WWE (probably because Shawn mentioned the “starving artist” thing), and I told him I had concerns. I said that WWE didn’t have the best history of pushing smaller guys like me, and I wasn’t as acrobatic as somebody like Rey Mysterio. I think that comment made Vince raise an eyebrow as well. But overall, despite my nervousness—and my slight anxiety about whether or not I was supposed to keep the suit jacket buttoned when I sat down—I thought it went well.
My match that night went well, too. I wrestled Lance Cade, and not only did we have a good little match, but there were quite a few fans who knew who I was and gave me a good reception. It helped that Lance and I had known each other for years, and he did his best to make me look good.
Afterward, John Laurinaitis, who was in charge of WWE talent relations, told me they were definitely interested and that he’d call me that week. Two days later, I went to Mexico for a week to perform in one of its biggest wrestling shows, TripleMania. When I came back from Mexico, I had an ROH show and then left for three months to England. I didn’t hear from Laurinaitis until he called, literally, as I checked in my bags for the flight to the U.K. I told him my phone wouldn’t work while I was in England, but I gave him my e-mail address so he could contact me if WWE was interested in using me. I checked my e-mail religiously that trip, but I never received a message from him. On the flip side, it would have been very easy for me to have called Johnny regularly while in England, just to check in and see what the status was. But, of course, that sort of ambition was not my style.
I had another great time in England, and I was able to add more shows in Europe during some weekends, just for fun. I wrestled at an anime convention in France, which was surreal, and performed at shows in Germany as well. I went straight from England to Japan on another tour with Pro Wrestling NOAH, which had teamed with Ring of Honor to promote some ROH shows in Japan at the end of the tour that were held in the Differ Ariake Arena, the same building where NOAH had their dojo and offices.
A few of us who had been on the NOAH tour—me, Rocky Romero, Eddie Edwards, and Davey Richards—had a couple of days off before the ROH shows. In years past, on their days off, wrestlers would be out partying or whatever. Then, you had us. We decided to have a cookie-eating contest at midnight in the hotel lobby. We made several trips to this little convenience store to pick up boxes of Country Ma’am cookies, which we’d never seen in the States. The winner of our contest would be whoever ate the most boxes of these ever-so-soft sweet treats.
The only one not participating was Davey Richards, who actually walked in on us after going for a midnight run because he couldn’t sleep. He was disgusted. I suspect if old-school wrestlers who had come to Japan before us—like Stan Hansen or Bruiser Brody—saw us, they would probably punch us all in the face. If notoriously tough wrestlers like them ever had any contest, it would’ve been a drinking contest, not one with soft cookies. But in my mind, there are few things better than a good old-fashioned eating
contest … even if I never win.
It was at an ROH show called the Tokyo Summit on September 14, 2008, where I won the Global Honored Crown (GHC) Junior Heavyweight Championship from Yoshinobu Kanemaru, who was the title’s very first champion and had held it multiple times. During my many tours of Japan, it was the only singles title I had won. Despite holding it for only a month, I was pleased they gave me the opportunity to be the champion, as I was only the second gaijin wrestler to win the title. I ultimately lost the title to KENTA on the following NOAH tour at a show in Hiroshima on October 13. (I consoled myself by eating more Country Ma’am cookies.) I was treated really well by Pro Wrestling NOAH, and it was just another example of why I loved wrestling overseas in general.
When I returned home from the Japan tour, I was shocked to find out that Gabe Sapolsky had been fired from Ring of Honor, and I was devastated. Gabe had been the booker since ROH’s inception, and we had a great working relationship. He always listened to my ideas and was honest with me when things were good and when things weren’t so good. Unfortunately, the business side of ROH had grown stagnant, and the organization was losing a significant amount of money. Wrestling’s popularity had declined, and the amount of people looking for alternatives to the wrestling they saw on television was limited. So Cary Silkin, the sole owner of ROH and the individual whose finances kept it afloat, decided to make a change.
Cary loved wrestling and grew up as a big WWE fan when Bruno Sammartino was the champion. He collected old wrestling posters and magazines and loved showing them to the guys who appreciated them. He would often give me old wrestling magazines, my favorite of which had “Nature Boy” Buddy Rogers on the cover in an iconic wrestling pose.