During a recent appearance on the “Gorilla Position” podcast, WWE Superstar
Daniel Bryandiscussed WWE’s creative team, Shawn Michaels and more. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On John Cena & Nikki Bella’s Relationship: “It is not my place to talk about their relationship because, like, I’ve had people say to me, like, ‘oh, is [the breakup] just for the show?’” Bryan continued, “and I’d say, ‘no, it’s definitely not for the show. It’s a very real thing and it’s hard on both of them.’ But any sort of comments like, I don’t necessarily think that if something were to happen with Brie and I, I wouldn’t want people very close to me saying, ‘well, you know this?’ And it’s like, it’s their thing. Whatever they want to release to the public, they can do. Whatever they don’t want to release to the public, that’s not my place to say anything.”
On WWE Largely Ignoring His Creative Suggestions: “If I see stuff on the show that I don’t like, right, I’ll be like, ‘okay,’ for me, for my stuff, I’ll go in and I’ll say, like, ‘hey, I don’t like this because of this, this, and this. Here’s my idea of how to fix it, how I think it’s better,’” Bryan said. “And 95% of the time, nothing changes, but I’m not like, ‘you need to do this’ or ‘you need to do that’ or whatever it is. It’s like, ‘hey, this is my opinion from my experience within this business and this is how I think it would work better both for me and who I’m working with.’ But I don’t fight for it because I’m happy to be back.”
On Shawn Michaels Telling Him About Fighting For His Creative Freedom: “So Shawn Michaels once showed me.” Bryan recalled, “he told me, but he showed me. He said, ‘look at John over there.’ He’s talking about John Cena. ‘He is constantly fighting every week to make sure that his segments are the best possible segments that they can be.’ Right? And so, like, that’s a gift that you have to fight every week. And I have to re-get, get back into that mindset of fighting for that and I don’t know that I’m mentally at that place yet. Now I’m just mentally grateful for being back.”