Yes!

by Daniel Bryan

  My last match for ROH was on September 26, 2009, and fittingly, I wrestled Nigel in the main event. It was a difficult task. We wanted to do justice to the matches we’d had before, but we also wanted to stay safe, which is easier said than done in wrestling. When Nigel caught me on the springboard dive into the crowd, the back of his head hit a chair. All of a sudden, he was loopy and probably concussed. We continued on and tried to give the audience one final classic match. I’m not sure we quite reached that, but the fans reacted like we had, all the same. When the match was over, all the ROH wrestlers and employees surrounded the ring as Nigel and I said farewell to Ring of Honor. The crowd gave us a standing ovation, a demonstration of appreciation for all the hard work we’d done to entertain them over the years. I got pretty emotional about it. I still do. When you have that many good memories, it’s hard to walk away.

  Soon after that, WWE advised Nigel that they wanted him to get bicep surgery before they would sign him. Not only could Nigel not afford the surgery, but he was receiving a different, conflicting message from his own doctor, who kept telling him that his bicep was healed already. Nigel refused the surgery, and WWE rescinded their contract offer. He ultimately signed with TNA, and after doing really well for a year there, he ended up needing to stop wrestling entirely because of his health.

  As far as my health, doctors never found out why my liver enzymes were so high (and remain high today). They ran all the typical tests, and all the results came back clean. Once I had passed all the tests, my medical paperwork finally went through, and WWE pushed through my contract on October 2, 2009, almost ten years to the day of when I had my first match.

  13

  FROM PRO TO BRO

  FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2014—5:23 P.M.

  It’s awkward, at first, to see Daniel Bryan and the Miz seated so far apart—almost intentionally—at a conference room table just prior to meeting the ten winners of the WrestleMania Reading Challenge. The former NXT Pro and Rookie pair has a turbulent history, dating back to Bryan’s WWE debut in early 2010. Yet Miz and Bryan keep it more than cordial and even chat about the “Yes!” Man’s upcoming marriage.

  Recently wed to former WWE Diva Maryse, Miz asks the right questions and shares something of a “bro” moment with Daniel at the table. “The Awesome One” then switches gears to talk shop, specifically WrestleMania. The NXT connection raises an interesting truth about the competition’s first season.

  “When I first heard about NXT, I thought, ‘I’m a ringer for this, right?’ It turned out that it wasn’t the case at all,” says Bryan, who finished with a record of 0-10 under Miz’s tutelage. “By the end, I saw NXT’s headline stars as Wade Barrett and David Otunga—those were the two guys ‘they’ really liked out of the group. I did not foresee me being the first one of us to main-event WrestleMania.”

  The unexpected “bro-down” ends as the Reading Challenge sweepstakes winners rally for their private Superstar signing in the room next door. The anxious young readers light up when both Daniel Bryan and the Miz make their entrance. One girl repeatedly squeaks, “OhmygodDanielBryan!” until he comes over to meet her.

  “You want to inspire curiosity and inspire kids to be able to learn on their own,” Bryan says. “Anything you can do to get them to read as many things as possible, that’s just all the better. It’s a step forward.”

  The winners line up for autographs and interrogation by Miz, who demands to know what book each youngster read to win the gift of his presence. Bryan turns the tables on the Awesome One moments later when Miz tries to start his own mock “Yes!” chant. Of course, Miz brushes off the response by this very exclusive crowd, but does acknowledge Daniel Bryan’s big match at WrestleMania, actually encouraging the kids’ cheers for his former NXT Rookie. Read between the lines of the Miz’s message and discover what might signify that Bryan has the support of the WWE locker room.

  When WWE offered me a contract, I came in with low expectations. Several of my friends had wrestled in WWE and expressed their frustration with the lack of opportunities. Brian Kendrick actually quit the company in 2004 because he was so unhappy there, then came back, only to get fired before I signed. Colt Cabana spent nearly two years in the developmental system, the whole time only getting a couple of appearances on TV. The only independent guy at that point who had had any major success was CM Punk.

  I also knew I had to change my style. I was used to wrestling twenty minutes every night in matches that made me popular with the independent wrestling fans. Most WWE TV matches are under five minutes. If you’re not winning the short match and you don’t get interview time, it’s hard to establish yourself as a character, much less get the fans to care about you.

  Wrestling longer matches always challenged me, both mentally and physically. It inspired me to be more creative, which was important because wrestling is my primary artistic outlet. It didn’t boost my confidence at all when William Regal warned me, “Your wrestling career is what you did before this. Anything after is just a bonus.” I tried to look at it that way and told myself not to expect much; just come in, save money, do my best with whatever I was given. That attitude has served me well through the dips I’ve had with WWE. Still, when you love something so much, it’s difficult not to get a little frustrated.

  One of my early frustrations, before WWE even knew what they wanted to do with me, was the issue of my name. I’d always been known as the American Dragon, but sometime in 2002, Ring of Honor booker Gabe Sapolsky told me he thought we should start using my real name as well, so it didn’t sound so much like a cartoon. I finally stopped wearing the mask at that point, so “the American Dragon” could just become more of a moniker. I liked the idea, and it didn’t take very long for me to be booked as Bryan Danielson almost everywhere I went, with two exceptions: New Japan (they didn’t want to confuse fans to whom I was introduced with this name during my first Far East visit) and All Star Wrestling (England was the last place where I still wrestled under mask to make me more kid-friendly).

  However, before I started in WWE, John Laurinaitis called to inform me that I needed to come up with a new name, something WWE could license and own. When he told me it couldn’t be my real name, I argued that I had a decent following as Bryan Danielson and that a lot of guys in WWE used their real names, including John Cena.

  “Well, we don’t do that anymore,” he said. He wanted me to come up with a list of ten names.

  The first person I called was William Regal, whom I asked for some input. We both liked the name Buddy because it was fun and it was my dad’s name. We next came up with some absurd last names to go with it, most notably Peacock, based on an English wrestler named Steve Peacock. I thought of using my middle name, Lloyd, so that went on the list as well. Then Regal brought up the idea of using Daniel because he thought it was a strong name. With that, a lightbulb went on in his head, and he came up with the name Daniel Bryan. Regal thought it would be a great idea because anybody who’d heard of me on the independents would easily be able to tell that it was the same guy. It sounded weird as I said it, but all the names sounded weird except my own anyhow. I put it on the list, along with Buddy Peacock and my favorite, Lloyd Boner.

  After I was officially signed, WWE just told me to wait and they’d call me when they were ready to use me. So for two months I waited in my rented room in Las Vegas, spending my time kickboxing, grappling with Neil, and trying to get in the best shape possible. During that time, WWE never contacted me or informed me of any plans. I wanted to be proactive—especially while I was receiving my first weekly paycheck in years—so I called them every two weeks to check in and see if they needed me to do anything.

  In December, I traveled home to Aberdeen for Christmas. Thinking there was no way WWE was going to call me up until after the first of the year, I indulged in ten days of Christmas gluttony. Sugar cookies, pumpkin cake, cinnamon rolls. Nothing was off-limits. That, of course, was when WWE called: the Saturday after Christmas.

 
To put it mildly, I was concerned. After eating all those sweets and barely working out for ten days, I felt like the fattest man alive. How much damage one can do in that amount of time is debatable, but it didn’t matter, because it affected my confidence. To make matters worse, I was still ailing from my third staph infection of the year. Plus, I hadn’t wrestled in months—a critical detail since, as the old wrestling saying goes, “The only thing that can get you in shape for wrestling is wrestling.”

  When I got to the show that Monday, I was actually relieved to learn I wasn’t doing something to air on TV. I wrestled Chavo Guerrero in an untelevised match before the show. That match against Chavo was only the second time I’d ever gotten “blown up”—a phrase used in wrestling for when someone gets really tired in a match, to the point that it affects performance—in my ten-year career. The first time was my forty-minutes-plus match with Paul London in 2003, when I weighed my heaviest at 205 pounds. With the combination of eating horrible food, not wrestling for months, and my nerves, by the end of the seven-minute match with Chavo, I was sucking wind. Everyone told me it was good, but I didn’t feel my best. And if I was going to debut on TV, nothing less than my best was acceptable.

  With that in mind, I asked to go spend a week down at FCW, WWE’s developmental program in Tampa, to shake off the ring rust and get back into wrestling shape. After only a week there, where I mainly wrestled Low Ki, I felt infinitely more confident. My plan was to ask to go there one week each month until they were ready to have me start on WWE programming. But right before I was about to leave Florida, seven other guys and I were pulled into an office by the trainers, Dusty Rhodes, Norman Smiley, and Tom Prichard (Dr. Tom). They gave us the good news that we were all being called up to TV. WWE was debuting a new show called WWE NXT, a hybrid of wrestling and reality TV that was going to replace the ECW program that aired on Tuesday nights. They didn’t have a lot of details, though we were told it would be some sort of competition/reality show. At first it didn’t feel real, but the next day, they had us shooting all sorts of pictures and videos for the show. We were all excited for the opportunity, especially some of the guys who had spent years in developmental without getting their break.

  The way they explained it to us, we would only wrestle on Tuesdays each week, and there was no way all of us could wrestle every show. I wanted to stay sharp and wrestle more frequently, so I talked to Dr. Tom and made the decision to move down to Florida so I could wrestle on the FCW shows as well. I drove the 2,300 miles from Vegas to Tampa in three days, which included a minor breakdown in Texas that set me back some hours. I got there just in time to move my stuff into a room I rented from Evan Bourne, then, not long after, we all flew out for the first NXT taping.

  Shortly before the premiere on February 23, 2010, we were given a little more info on the show. We were going to be called “Rookies,” and we would each have a “Pro,” somebody who had been in WWE for a while and was assigned to teach us the ropes in the big leagues. WWE revealed the Pro and Rookie pairings online, which is how I found out my Pro would be the Miz. Even though the whole thing was fiction, the fans who followed me on the independents were outraged. I had years of wrestling experience and had become relatively well known as an excellent wrestler, whereas Miz had way less experience and struggled with credibility among the hardcore audience. Originally I wanted Regal to be my Pro because of our history, but I quickly realized being paired with Miz gave me a built-in story.

  We had an interesting dynamic because Miz was everything I wasn’t. He was good on the microphone and carried himself like a star. We both thought the concept of Miz—this arrogant, overbearing Hollywood egotist—trying to turn a bland independent wrestler into a WWE Superstar would be a great story to tell. I even tried to make myself look more generic to fit in. I cut both my beard and my longer hair and avoided using my nicely designed ring gear, instead wearing plain maroon trunks and gear. As it turned out, WWE decided not to leverage any of that detail in the story, and I just made myself look uninteresting. Chalk that up as a lesson learned.

  Initially I felt lucky to have that entertaining contrast with my Pro, but I was also fortunate that Miz actually wanted to be there participating in NXT because, when we came in, most of the other Pros didn’t. At the time, WWE Superstars didn’t typically work on both Monday (Raw) and Tuesday (SmackDown). You were typically on one or the other, not both. The selected Pros who were used to going home on Tuesday after Raw were pissed because they had to spend an extra day on the road, and the ones who were there for Tuesday night’s show were already aggravated because it took them away from focusing on their own segments for SmackDown.

  The Miz didn’t complain at all. Instead, he saw it as an opportunity and spent time with me to find ways we could make our partnership stand out. He genuinely wanted what we did to be good. The more I saw how hard he worked, the more I respected him. I also learned a lot from him on how to navigate the political waters in WWE. He’s also somewhat of a perfectionist; if he wasn’t content with what we were doing, he would talk to as many people as he could to get it changed. Sometimes he was successful, sometimes he wasn’t. But watching him handle it all was really helpful in familiarizing myself with the world of WWE.

  Although he didn’t have as much wrestling experience as I did, I recognized all that he had been through. He was mildly famous for being on MTV’s The Real World, which helped him get signed with WWE, but hurt his reputation among fans and wrestlers alike. When he first started, Miz went through a period where he was almost exclusively relegated to hosting various WWE segments like the Diva Search. Backstage, he was kicked out of the locker room because, supposedly, he accidentally spilled crumbs over someone’s bags and didn’t clean it up. His gear was literally thrown out into the hallway, and he wasn’t allowed to change in the locker room for months. Despite all this, he didn’t quit or give up. Even though there was a portion of the locker room that still felt he didn’t belong, Miz’s hard work and ability to get under the crowd’s skin was making the right people take notice, and by 2010, he was really on the rise.

  As I mentioned earlier, the inaugural episode of NXT went really well—so well, in fact, that I thought for sure I was a ringer for the show, a natural favorite. It turns out that wasn’t the case at all. On the second episode, they had me heavily tape my ribs from the match with Chris Jericho the previous week, in which I did a suicide dive onto Jericho and hit my ribs hard on the announce table, instantly bruising me up. WWE.com covered it, and the moment was replayed during my entrance, so it was fresh in fans’ minds. That night in week two, I wrestled Jericho’s Rookie on the show, Wade Barrett, who beat me in three minutes. There was an embarrassing moment when I slipped trying to do a springboard into the ring, but Wade covered it perfectly by immediately hitting me with his finish and pinning me. At the announce booth, Jericho helped out the situation as well, because he was on commentary and claimed that I slipped because of my damaged ribs, then took all the credit for Wade’s victory.

  After the match, without warning, Chris started beating me up and put me in his submission hold, the Walls of Jericho, essentially a modified Boston crab. I didn’t know it was coming, and it wasn’t preplanned; Chris was on commentary, and Vince directed him over the headset to do it. For most of the season, we Rookies had no idea what was going to happen on each show, but there were times when the Pros didn’t know either.

  The next few shows fell in line with the story I expected. Miz and I teamed together, and he ended up getting pinned because he and I were arguing. The following week, Miz wasn’t there, so he scheduled me in a match against the Great Khali, a seven-foot-one, 350-pound Indian giant, which was my punishment for causing him to lose. I lost the match, but as long as I put up a good fight and showed heart, it didn’t matter. It was all about the story between Miz and me.

  Also around this time, I realized that moving to Florida was a complete waste of time. FCW was only able to book me on a handful of shows becau
se of the number of people with developmental contracts who needed the experience. The matches I did have were mostly multiperson tag matches with the other seven NXT Rookies, so I’d only be able to get in the ring for a couple of minutes. The last match I did for FCW was the straw that broke the camel’s back. We were doing a four-on-four tag match, and due to some sort of confusion or mishap, I didn’t even get tagged into the match. After that, I spoke with Dr. Tom and decided I needed to move back to Las Vegas, where I’d be able to at least stay in shape with my grappling and kickboxing and keep my kicks sharp. Instead of driving myself across country, I paid my friend Kristof to drive my car back—and, like what happened on my drive to Florida, my car ended up breaking down on him as well. Fortunately, Kristof got it fixed and into Vegas just in time for me to move into my new apartment—perfect timing, actually, because NXT was being taped in my city that following Tuesday.

  A week after my loss to Khali, things took a turn for the worse. We were in San Jose, California, for Miz’s second week in a row of not being on the show, and they had me teaming with Michael Tarver against Darren Young and David Otunga. I learned of the match from producer Mike Rotunda, who told me I was scheduled to lose in order “to keep up the losing streak gimmick.” I was a little taken aback. I’d lost every match on NXT so far, but there were reasons for each loss that advanced the story with Miz and me. With him not there, they just decided to turn the story into a losing streak. WWE had tried this several times with other wrestlers previously, and it never really worked; they would usually just forget about it, and the fans would just start seeing the guy as a loser. I started getting a little worried.

  The next day, I had my first (and, really, my only) experience of disrespect by another Superstar, while headed from San Jose to Phoenix for my first-ever WrestleMania with WWE. All of us who performed on the SmackDown and NXT tapings were on the same flight, including the NXT Rookies. The eight of us were sitting in booths near a food court at the airport, along with Regal. Ezekiel Jackson, a muscular, 300-pound guy who had only been wrestling for a couple of years, came up to us and said, “Which one of you rookies has an aisle seat?” He had a middle seat and wasn’t happy about it.