Daniel Bryan was the special guest on WWE’s Off The Top Rope on ESPN SportsCenter yesterday night with Jonathan Coachman to discuss the confrontation with The Miz and life in and away from WWE.
Coachman started the show by showing a replay of The Miz getting in Bryan’s face last week on WWE Network’s Talking Smack and then asked how much of that did he know it was coming at him. “Very little,” Bryan replied, saying that he knew they were going to banter back and forth and both know how to get on each others nerves. Bryan said that The Miz knows he doesn’t like the way he wrestles and The Miz fired back by calling him on out on something that’s very personal to him.
“He knows that I’m constantly having these feelings that if WWE doesn’t want to let me wrestle, I go to the indies,” Bryan added, saying that he does think sometimes that he’s a coward for not carrying on.
Despite being a “work,” Bryan said he thought about punching The Miz in the face. “Part of me just wanted to punch him in the face but I figured that probably it wasn’t such a smart idea on live TV,” he said.
When Coach asked how the two will go forward, Bryan replied that it will be interesting to see. “I’m not sure. I think they’re gonna keep us away from each other a little bit because they know how intense that can be between the two of us. We have to stay away from each other especially now that Smackdown is live,” he said. Bryan admitted that The Miz is a very hard worker and has a huge amount of respect for him and after he walked off he cut a passionate promo.
The discussion then turned to life away from the WWE. Bryan said they were six hard months and jokingly said that E! filmed all his depressions for the Total Bellas show. He said it’s great to be back around friends and the action but it’s extremely hard to watch matches at ringside when the whole arena is going “Yes! Yes! Yes!” and he’s just sitting on a chair. He often complains to his wife afterward and threatens to quit but Brie puts him in his place.
Asked how he’s feeling and if he will ever eventually return to the ring, Bryan said that 9 out of 10 days he says he will and he tries to keep convincing people that he’s okay…including himself. “The concussion issue is very subjective,” he said, adding that he was cleared by a lot of specialists, and then was stopped by one test, arguing that that particular test should not have stopped him from returning after doing further research. Bryan told Coachman that he feels 100%.
Bryan said that it was “brutal” to have all the cameras for Total Divas and Total Bellas following him, especially the filming for Total Bellas which involved him and Brie moving to Florida to live with John Cena and Nikki for four weeks!
You can watch the interview below.
