Daniel Bryan Is More Grateful Than Ever

When Daniel Bryan announced his retirement on February 8 of 2016, his farewell speech centered on one theme: gratitude. Gratitude that his retirement was taking place near his hometown, in front of family and friends. Gratitude for his wife, Brie Bella. Perhaps most important of all, gratitude towards the fans who helped raise him up from an indie darling to quite possibly the most beloved WWE superstar of his generation.

We are now four months into his improbable return to pro wrestling after brain injuries forced him out of the ring, and Bryan is well aware of how rare this type of second act is. So aware, in fact, that it has actually liberated him. Gone are the butterflies and nerves and stresses that may have once plagued him. Instead, there's simply wrestling. And for that, he's grateful.

We caught up with the former WWE champion ahead of this year's SummerSlam pay-per-view to find out how he's adjusting to life back in the ring, discuss the merits of goat yoga, and to answer the age-old question: Can you still be called an underdog once your career is immortalized in a video game?

GQ: I've got to ask you the quintessential Daniel Bryan question for 2018 right off the bat: How is your body feeling since your return to the ring?
Daniel Bryan: You know, it's actually felt really, really good until this weekend. [Laughs] I did something to my lower back. But that's just something that happens when you're wrestling. You'll just get things here and there. So when I get up in the morning, it's hard to get out of bed. But once the fluid starts moving I feel okay. That's part of the reality of being a 37-year-old professional wrestler.

I was curious how it felt to be back in the ring those first couple of weeks. Did your body have to completely re-adjust to running the ropes and taking bumps again?
You know, it's interesting. Never in the ring did I feel like I had to re-adjust. It's so strange because I did a lot of jiu jitsu and kickboxing-type stuff, and when Brie was wanting to train for the women's Royal Rumble, I helped her train, right? But that was the only time getting in the ring. I didn't do any bumps or anything like that. So running the ropes and all that kind of stuff, it's like the first time I've done it pretty much in three years. And honestly, I didn't feel like anything had changed, which is really bizarre. You think it would.

Your very first night back in the ring after getting cleared by WWE, you're in the ring with Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn, you're delivering a promo, and you know you're only a couple minutes away from getting physical for the first time in a long time. Take me through what's going through your mind in that moment. Are you nervous? Excited? Paranoid?
Honestly, I was just excited. I trained with Shawn Michaels when I first started wrestling and he would say that the day you stopped getting nervous was the day that you need to retire. I'm like, “Should I retire again?” Honestly, I don't get nervous anymore. I just get excited. I think part of that has to do with it being taken away from me and then being able to come back. Now I approach the whole thing with such gratitude and joy. I think if you were to rewatch that first time where I got physical, while they're punching me in the face, you might see a little bit of a smirk on my face, just from the joy of being able to do something physical again.

So no nerves at all on the night of your return?
The one thing I was most concerned about was doing the repeated running dropkicks in the corner. So I had no idea that I was going to get cleared. When I left for that trip, I was going to the Middle East to do some media and some appearances. And then I got cleared literally the night before. So I didn't have wrestling shoes, I didn't have anything. The shoes that I had were, like, from a thrift store and are a half size too big. [Laughs] And that's what I'm wearing as I'm running corner to corner doing the dropkicks. In the middle of doing this, what I'm thinking to myself is, “Man, I hope my shoes don't come off!” That was the only nerve-wracking part of it.

Is it a little bit surreal to you that fans now get to play a featured showcase of your career in the newest WWE 2K19 video game? I mean, a lot has been made of you throughout your career as the ultimate underdog, but now you're the guy being featured in a massively popular video game series.
I've been talking about this with my wife and some of my friends recently. At what point are you no longer an underdog? Because when they put you in the Showcase Mode, it's like, “Hey, I think you've just made it.” Like, I'm on my wife's reality show. I'm in WWE. At what point am I no longer this relatable person that I used to be because of the successes that I've had, right?

Had this feature been released in last year's game, I think it would have been sort of bittersweet for a lot of fans, because at that point we all thought your in-ring career was completely over. Do you think you would have felt the same way had this been a feature in 2K18?
I don't know. I mean, I think in the same sense it's still an honor, right? Because it's them seeing my story as worthy, right? That's really cool. I think I would've been appreciative of it. And given that I'm somebody who doesn't play video games, I wouldn't have to relive it. [Laughs] But I definitely appreciate that it's in this year's game and that it ends on a positive note. It ends on this idea of me coming back and how the future is open, and I think that's really cool.

You've spoke before about how tough it was for you to be in the role of general manager on SmackDown Live after your retirement and how you were unhappy at times. Was there a certain segment or a specific moment that sticks out to you that was particularly tough?
Well, there was a moment of change where I had just kind of accepted my fate, and it was early on when I was general manager. I was sitting at ringside and it was during a Dean Ambrose/AJ Styles match. When I had come out to the ring, the fans were very loud in support of me. But then I just realized that, okay, there's this reaction, and it's cool. I've always thought the reaction is cool. But to me, the coolest part about the reaction is being able to do something with it. It's being able to transfer that into this story. You work so hard throughout your career to get people to care about you so that when you wrestle they care about the story [in the ring]. And at that point I'd gotten them to care, but then I couldn't do anything with that reaction.

You couldn't build upon that reaction to tell more of a story in the ring.
It was also, you know, AJ Styles and Dean Ambrose are both fantastic, right? And I was there watching them, thinking how AJ's here now and I'm not. Like, screw this, man. I don't want to just sit here and watch other people wrestle. That's not what I want to do with my life. So that was really the moment where I was like, I'm not accepting no for an answer. And even if that means wrestling somewhere else, I'm not accepting no for an answer.

You wrote in your book about how you scored in the bottom one percentile for ambition in one of the personality tests that the WWE administered to you. After everything you've gone through these past few years, if you were to take that test again, do you think you would score differently?
No, I think it would be the same. The reality is that I just really love wrestling. I'm still not very ambitious with other things, right? For example, I'm ambitious in regards to returning to wrestling, but I'm not ambitious in regards to making money. Do you see what I'm saying? There's a difference there. My ambition is to do the things that I love and be around the people that I love. When they do these tests, ambition in that direction isn't described as ambition. It's like, “Oh, he likes leisure. Oh, he likes pursuing his hobbies and he likes spending time with his family.” To them, that's pursuing leisure. But to me, that's an ambition towards the things that I love. So it's different. It's all in how you define something.

I want to take you back a little bit to a city that has been very good to you in your career—New Orleans. WrestleMania XXX is held there, and you have arguably the biggest in-ring moment of your career. Then this past year, at WrestleMania 34, you get to make your official in-ring return. How different were those two experiences and does one stand out more than the other in your mind?
I think this year's will actually stand out more. WrestleMania XXX was a career accomplishment. WrestleMania 34 felt more like a personal accomplishment. And there was a lot less stress going into WrestleMania 34 than there was for WrestleMania XXX. You have to understand, at WrestleMania XXX, my neck was pretty bad at that point. I was getting these horrible shooting pains down my arms. They had a camera crew following me around for a WWE Network special that they did on me. On top of that, we had the Total Divas crew following us. On top of that, Brie and I were getting married on the next Friday. On top of that, we were closing on our first house together. And then on top of that, I was wrestling two matches.

I enjoyed it, but I put a lot of pressure on myself to make both of those matches as good as I possibly could. Whereas this year, I still wanted to do that, I still wanted to make the match as good as it could possibly be, but I approached the whole thing with a completely different attitude. It was more like, “Hey, I get to go out here and do this thing that I love. And even if it's the worst match in my career, who cares. I'll do better next time.” Like, no matter how good or bad it goes, there's a certain joy in just being able to do it. That's the big difference. Plus my daughter, Birdie, got to watch me wrestle. She'll never remember it, you know what I mean, but I just think that kind of stuff is really cool.

Last night, in preparation for this interview, I reread an article I wrote after you announced your retirement. I detailed many of the ways in which you broke barriers and shifted stereotypes within the professional wrestling industry. I ended that article on the notion that it would be fitting if in your retirement, you helped usher in legitimate changes to help extend the careers of others. I think you're now in an even better position to speak on that. Are you constantly thinking about ways to extend your career after a three-year layoff?
I've been thinking about that a lot. Especially as far as scheduling goes. I think the one negative with WWE—and, you know, it's a positive for the company, but it makes it harder for the performers—is the number of shows that we do. So, for example, in 2013 I did 227 matches. In 2014, I had that neck surgery. So, go figure.

Do you think there's a viable solution that can appease both the company and the performers?
We did a show in Albany, Georgia, on Sunday, and I think there were maybe 2,000 people there and probably didn't draw a lot of money. It might've been, at best, a break even for the company, right? But to get there, we had to drive four hours from Pensacola. And the performers now, it's a different generation. Because I had gone to some of these shows in the early 2000s, if there was a show that was really small, I feel like with the old generation there would be people who'd be like, “Oh, we're just not going to do anything.” Our wrestlers now aren't like that. You go to a show and even if there's not many people there, everybody still busts their butts. But now with the TV deals that they've brokered, we have this regular amount of income that WWE, the company, is guaranteed every year. And it's a substantial amount of money. So what's more important? Doing as many live events as we do, where some of them don't make as much money, versus doing less shows, which protects everybody's bodies so we all can have more longevity.

But you know that we can't make policy change. Like, I can't just walk up to Vince McMahon today and be like, “Hey, we need to do this.” Nor should I, right? This is a business model that has worked for a long time and that's how they've made money for years and years and years. But now the business model is changing a little bit and so maybe there's a way to protect performers a little bit more from these injuries. Giving people X amount of time off every year and that sort of thing. Randy Orton and I were actually just talking about this the other day. Randy wants to keep doing this for another 10 years. I want to do a wrestling match three months before I die. You don't see artists saying, “Okay, I'm going to stop painting when I hit this age,” right? If you look at professional wrestling, this is my artistic outlet, my creative outlet. I want to keep doing this for as long as I can, so what are the things that I need to do to achieve that. That includes things from a company perspective, and that includes things from a personal perspective.

Things like goat yoga?
Ha!

Please explain goat yoga to me. It seems kind of dangerous.
I can't explain it to you. You essentially just play with goats. The yoga part is secondary to the goat part. So, yeah, Brie and I went on a date where we thought it would be fun to go do some goat yoga. And it actually was a ton of fun! We didn't get any productive yoga done. My body did not feel any better, and it also did not feel worse. But the goats were very pleasant. I mean, they might step on your groin or do something weird, but it was a lot of fun.

Seriously, though, have you already started to implement changes from a personal perspective? Whether it be new types of training, a different approach to being inside the ring, different approaches to recovery?
Brie says to me all the time that if I want to wrestle for as long as I want to wrestle, then I need to start changing my style. And I'm gradually doing it, gradually changing my style. Eliminating moves that are—so we tell people not to try this at home because everything is risky, right? Like, Bruno Sammartino broke his neck doing a body slam. So, okay, everything is risky. But it's mitigating those risks. Do I ever need to do the diving headbutt again? The answer is probably not. But you also have to deal with fan expectation, too. I read this book by Questlove on creativity.

Creative Quest.
It's really good. He talks about this idea of fan expectation and, like, if you're a musician and people are used to your albums sounding a certain way, but then you do an album that's completely different than anything you've ever done before, even if it's good, your fans might reject it because they want what they've gotten before. When I came back, I was already thinking of that. During my independent career, I focused a lot on submission wrestling, which is an easier style on your body while still being exciting for the fans. But if I'm going to change, it has to be a gradual thing rather than this stark departure from what people expect from Daniel Bryan.

Is that tough for you to come to grips with? The fact that you can't necessarily be going 110 miles per hour at all times?
Well, it's also creatively fulfilling. Like, how do I do this creatively to limit injuries while still creating this excitement. I'm working within these walls as opposed to everything being open, but I think when you put boundaries on yourself from a creative aspect, sometimes it can improve creativity.