by Daniel Bryan
My dad loved telling this story and howled laughing every time, mostly because of my sister’s reaction. Her mouth went agape and her eyes opened wide. She stared in shock for what seemed like an eternity, and then dropped her head down in embarrassment. It was the first adult male butt she had ever seen. Embarrassingly enough, there’ve been many times in my career when I, too, have been sunset flipped and had my pants pulled down. I wonder if there were any mouths agape and eyes widened. I wonder if mine could be the first adult male butt some kid has ever seen. (My dad always howled laughing at that thought as well.)
Meeting Ultimate Warrior was cool, yet the best part was seeing how much he loved his little girls and his wife. Bri was one of the Divas who walked the Hall of Famers out to the stage that weekend, and she told me that Warrior didn’t want anyone but his daughters to walk him out. I’m a big softy, and it always nearly makes me cry at the Hall of Fame when guys talk about their wives putting up with them over the years and how family got them through so much. With his passing, it was hard to lose one of the guys I adored as a child, but what really made it heart-wrenchingly sad for me was how much he loved his family.
One year, I dressed up as Ultimate Warrior for Halloween. My mom got me face paint and sewed me a costume—a stuffed bodybuilder-type bodysuit with neon spandex-covered strings stitched on the arms. Years later in 2010, I worked a show with NWA after I’d been fired by WWE. A fan had won the opportunity to announce the main event of the show, which was me against Adam Pearce. The guest announcer was incredibly nervous and when the guy announced me, he mistakenly presented me not as the American Dragon but the Ultimate Dragon. So I came out and decided to do a full-on Ultimate Warrior entrance, sprinting to the ring, shaking the ropes, and all that.
24
THE MOVEMENT MEETS THE AUTHORITY
SUNDAY, APRIL 6, 2014—5:59 P.M.
It’s the final countdown, and Daniel Bryan is suiting up for his clash with “the King of Kings,” Triple H. In the locker room, Bryan slides on his new fur-lined kickpads. “Bruiser Brody,” he plainly proclaims, hinting at the homage to the similarly feral-bearded former WWE Superstar. While changing into his unique battle armor, the Beard finds a moment to converse with his one-time mentor, the rugged William Regal. Another supporter of the “Yes!” Movement, the English grappler is elated to see Daniel Bryan take to the Grandest Stage of Them All against one of the ring’s greatest competitors, the Game. It’s probably one of the most important prematch talks Bryan will have this evening. So much history and so much respect fuel his conversation with Regal.
Beyond the dressing room, Superstars are huddled around monitors in the backstage area watching what is a WWE fan’s dream sequence with Hulk Hogan, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, and The Rock inside the middle of the ring. Mere yards away, Daniel Bryan is warming up with kicks that would make Craig Wilson proud. The air takes a beating from the Beard prior to what’s in store for the Cerebral Assassin.
Match time finally falls upon him, and in anticipation the huge crowd musters the loudest “Yes!” chant you’ve ever heard. In heavy contrast to his rival, the theatrical entrance and gold armor accentuating Triple H’s wealth of power is an unforgettable image, but it’s instantly rivaled and topped by Bryan’s simple, full-heartened gallop down the ramp to the ring. Daniel Bryan emerges on the Grandest Stage of Them All to 75,167 voices shouting in his favor. Tonight, they seek the fall of The Authority and the triumph of the “Yes!” Movement.
As they’d so desperately hoped, he does it. Bryan wins. Any other year, this victory would be any other Superstar’s WrestleMania moment. Dethroning Triple H—the Game, a thirteen-time World Champion and WWE’s quintessential competitor—at WrestleMania is something few men can claim. And Daniel Bryan does it with skill and tenacity, securing an indisputable pinfall over The Authority’s leader. But before Bryan can celebrate and move on to a triple-threat match against Randy Orton and Batista, the Cerebral Assassin deploys a brutal attack, sabotaging the underdog with a deck already stacked against Bryan. It’s “business” as usual for WWE’s nefarious villain, Triple H.
Craig and the crew from WWE.com did an excellent job chronicling my WrestleMania week. They followed me around, snapping pictures and asking questions. So did producers from WWE Network, as I was a focus for one of their short documentaries. They captured all the major moments of the week, so I feel like I don’t have to say much about it. The only thing I will mention is that I’m probably the only person to main-event WrestleMania who flew there economy class. I didn’t mind, though, because I had my future wife right next to me in the middle seat.
Despite everything going on—finalizing wedding plans, multiple crews documenting my days, and, of course, two hugely important main event matches—I was relatively calm and confident all week. I had stuff to do and my body to take care of; plus, the Superstars usually have a million signings, meet-and-greets, and media days. Truthfully, you get so swept up in the whirlwind that is WrestleMania week that you don’t have time to be nervous. The only things I was really anxious about were, first, the pain running down my arm and, second, my gear. There was nothing more I could do about the pain, but the gear I wore on WrestleMania was a very important and conscious decision I was going to have to make.
Since 2004, I’ve worn maroon in my ring attire. At the time, Dave Taylor was running a wrestling camp, and William Regal was there not just helping out, but also getting himself back into ring shape. On a trip to India, he had gotten a heart parasite, had to have his heart stopped, then started again, and couldn’t wrestle for a year. But he was finally ready to come back. I went out to Atlanta and stayed with him to help him get ready, and it became an awesome, weeklong learning experience. At the end of the week, Regal gave me a brand-new pair of maroon boots, maroon kneepads, and maroon trunks. Maroon was Regal’s signature color for a long time, and from then on, it became the dominant color in my gear. It’s a small nod of appreciation to the man who’s been the biggest influence on my career.
Even though he hadn’t ever talked to us about it back at his Academy, Shawn Michaels had some of the best ring gear ever. He also had some of the worst ring gear ever, like when he returned to WWE in 2002 after his back surgery and wore brown tights. With that notable exception and the times when he refereed in bike shorts, Shawn looked the part. My ring attire was never something I put a huge emphasis on early in my career, so when I started in WWE, I really had to step up my game as far as ring gear went.
What I wore when I debuted on NXT was just a basic, design-free maroon, which is what I liked when I was in Ring of Honor: plain. A few years later, I was reading a Jill Thompson comic called “Beasts of Burden,” which was about a group of dogs (clearly something I’d be into). Through social media, Jill saw a photo of me reading her comic and reached out to say she thought it was awesome that I liked her book. I thought it was awesome that she liked wrestling and I asked her if she had any interest in making my ring attire because I always figured comic book artists would be the best at designing ring gear. Her first design was what I wore at Money in the Bank 2011; she viewed me as the classic wrestler, so she integrated the stripe from the design of a classic Ford Mustang into the gear she made. There was so much more thought put into it than I’d ever imagined would go into something like my ring attire.
When I was involved with the Wyatts a few months before WrestleMania 30, I knew I didn’t want to wear exactly what they wore, even though that’s what I ended up doing for the short, two-week run. What I originally envisioned, long term, was appearing more like one of my favorite bearded wrestlers, Bruiser Brody. When he competed, Brody wore furry boots and a fur jacket, and he wrestled like a wild man. When I explained the idea to Jill, she immediately drew up something awesome that I had never seen before: kickpads with fur on the back. I didn’t know if it was possible, but I sent the design to my gear maker in Japan. He said he thought it was really cool and that he’d find a way to make it work. Within a month�
��s time, he had it complete and in my hands, but it was far too late for me to use it as a Wyatt. Unsure of my direction for WrestleMania 30 and beyond, all I knew was that, at some point, I was going to have to wear this new gear.
WrestleMania is usually the time when all the top stars bust out their most elaborate gear. Heading into WrestleMania 30, I didn’t want an extravagant robe like I had at WrestleMania XXVIII. That wasn’t me, nor was it the character fans saw on TV every week. I did have some new gear designed that looked really nice, but I kept going back and looking at my unused Brody gear, which I loved. I recognized it was a radical departure from what I had been wearing, so I just wasn’t confident it would work, yet I brought it for the trip, just in case.
On the Sunday of WrestleMania, I still didn’t know what I was going to wear, so I brought both sets of gear to the stadium. I asked Bri for her opinion, and she liked the Brody gear, but, like me, she was indecisive about it. So that day, I just put it on and asked the one person whose advice on wrestling I trust more than anyone else’s: William Regal. He liked that it was different, though he couldn’t tell if it was different good or different bad. His advice was that it was probably not the time to try something radically different. This might have been the first time ever I didn’t take his advice.
I tried on my other new gear, and it looked good. However, the Brody gear had my heart, and at the last minute I decided to take the chance. It ended up not making a difference one way or the other, but besides the pain in my arm, that decision was the biggest stressor on the biggest day of my career.
Once the gear issue had been solved, I was focused exclusively on my matches. First up was the one-on-one match with Triple H, who had this awesome entrance. He emerged out of smoke, and the lights shone on a massive throne where he was seated with three scantily clad ladies by his side. Hunter was wearing a robe and a crown, but the robe had golden football-esque shoulder pads on it with enormous spikes sticking out of each side. The crown connected to a golden skull mask that covered his face, and as he stood up from the throne, the women unclasped the robe. He slowly took off the crown, and then his ring music hit for his walk down the ramp. The decadence and splendor of the whole thing fit him well. Likewise, the simplicity of my entrance fit me. I just came out in my Brody gear, wearing my usual shirt with my usual music doing my usual entrance. What made it special was that seventy-five thousand people were “Yes!”-ing on my entrance along with me.
When you’re wrestling Hunter, regardless of when it is, you’re in a main attraction with a guy who only wrestles a couple of times a year. I’ve never been looked at by WWE as the guy to wrestle any of the iconic Superstars who come back. It was neat because a moment before the match, I was able to take a step back from the situation and think about how I’d been watching Hunter wrestle since I was a teenager. The irony was not lost on me that Triple H’s first ’Mania match, at WrestleMania XII, was the first WrestleMania I’d ever ordered. Nor was the coincidence that his first WrestleMania match was a supershort squash match against Ultimate Warrior, and my first WrestleMania match was a supershort squash match against Sheamus.
On top of that, Triple H was the first guy I’d ever been in the ring with who wrestles with an Attitude-era, heavyweight, main event style. My style in WWE is completely different, more of a fast-paced, cruiserweight style. One of the things I’d always loved about being an independent wrestler was the opportunity to wrestle so many different people with so many different styles, and this was a chance to do that on a much grander scale than I had ever done before. The match itself was a blast. It wasn’t a Triple H match and it wasn’t a Daniel Bryan match; it was a blend of both. I did things I hadn’t done in WWE before, like the front flip dive I used to do on the independents, just without doing it into the fans and without the springboard. (The last thing I wanted to do was slip while trying to spring up to the top rope on the biggest night of my career.) Triple H was great to work with, and I learned a lot from him in that one match. It’s nearly impossible to explain to nonwrestlers this learning that happens as you wrestle someone, but afterward, it made me even more disappointed that I didn’t get the experience of wrestling him and Shawn Michaels on a nightly basis the way guys like Randy Orton, Batista, and John Cena did.
Hunter and I took the crowd on a roller coaster, and when I hit the flying knee and pinned him, the crowd jumped up and down in excitement. With that win, I would, in fact, be going on to the final match of the night and contending for the WWE World Heavyweight Title. Making the moment even more dramatic, Stephanie got in the ring and repeatedly slapped me in the face, and then Hunter attacked me from behind to go after the shoulder that was “injured” in a beatdown he gave me two weeks prior to the show. As he slammed my shoulder into the ring post and whacked it really hard with a chair, the cheers instantly turned to boos.
25
HEALING KISS
SUNDAY, APRIL 6, 2014—7:09 P.M.
Wounded yet victorious, Bryan hobbles up the ramp in a condition that appears to signify that his greatest hope of winning the WWE World Heavyweight Title is in heavy jeopardy. The “Yes!” Man finds his fiancée waiting for him to pass through the curtain. She’s overjoyed for her husband-to-be and proud of the “Yes!” Movement. So much yet lies ahead for both competitors, and so their exchange is short and is sealed with a kiss.
Due to Triple H’s postmatch assault (which is methodically consistent with the one he’d levied on WWE programming weeks ago), Bryan receives attention from WWE medical trainers. The new “co”–No. 1 contender for the WWE World Heavyweight Title winces each time he raises his left arm farther during the assessment. Meanwhile, time ticks away before his triple-threat match against both Batista and Randy Orton. Some might stop right there. Quit. But the Animal and the Viper will have no choice but to face an unwavering American Dragon.
“I’ve got one more match,” Bryan asserts. “I’ve fought through worse and I’ll fight through this.”
Soon after, jaws remain agape in the audience and around the world following the greatest upset in the history of WrestleMania. Brock Lesnar has rendered a blemish on the Undertaker’s streak, and now that it’s time for his second match of the night, Daniel Bryan aims to rally the Mercedes-Benz Superdome back into an optimistic frenzy by sustaining a one-armed “Yes!” chant. The WWE Universe was already pulling for the underdog warrior, but now, with the fall of a Phenom, Bryan has become the last hope for WWE fans this night.
After the opening encounter with Hunter, I went into near isolation in order to prepare for the second match. The first match was good and physical—the way I like it—but that also comes with repercussions. I had to allow my body to come down from that first high, then get ready to repeat it just a few hours later. I’d done this before, but never at such a high level—and as I get older, the harder it becomes. It’s not as easy now as it was when I was twenty years old doing the Super 8 and King of Indies tournaments, especially with my neck issue.
I was so focused on getting ready that I didn’t even see it when Brock Lesnar pinned the Undertaker, ending his WrestleMania winning streak at 21-1. I heard the bell, turned over and looked at the monitor, then stood in shock as I saw Brock with his hand raised, while the Undertaker was down. This was the one match that everybody knew the finish of, and we were all wrong. Myself included. As a performer, the first thing I recognized was that with Brock’s win, the life and energy were suddenly gone inside the Superdome. On trons around the venue, there were amazing shots of the audience’s reactions and people standing with their mouths wide open, as if they had just witnessed the impossible. I’m sure if they had filmed the Superstars and Divas backstage, there would have been even better stunned reactions. My concern instantly went to Bri. Her match was next, and the silence that permeated the Superdome was eerie. The ending of the Undertaker’s streak was one of the most shocking, monumental events in WrestleMania history. And now Bri and the other Divas had to follow it. I kept my eyes glue
d to the screen to see how she would do.
Throughout the week, I could tell how eager Bri was for her match at ’Mania—a fourteen-woman match for the Divas Championship. After the disappointment the year before of having their match pulled right before they went out, this time the Bella Twins had to go out in front of a crowd completely deflated by the Undertaker loss. But Bri wouldn’t be deterred. Even though it was a short match, she did her best. She and Nicole were able to get the crowd back into it when the two of them did a double-suicide dive to the floor, rarely seen from the Divas, and then came back and had the first Bella face-off in a long time. When they went at it, fighting back and forth until Nicole hit Bri with her Rack Attack, the crowd came up for it. She did a great job with the opportunity she had, and I was very proud of my soon-to-be-wife.
I was getting ready to go on next, and as I was getting ready to walk out, I saw Undertaker just outside of the Gorilla position, lying down in a heap on the floor. He’d suffered a serious concussion, and a doctor and a trainer were checking on him, among other people. I walked past the scene as I went out and couldn’t help but think of how much Undertaker had given of his body and of himself to make WrestleMania special. Our main event needed to keep it special. For the first time, I felt the pressure of the moment. All I could do was focus on my performance.
26
YES! HE DID!