Daniel Bryan did a recent interview with MySanAntonio.com where he spoke about coming up with the idea to shave his beard to further his program with WWE Universal Champion “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt.
After losing to Wyatt at the Survivor Series pay-per-view event in November, Bryan needed to find a way to further the storyline. This is when he came up with the idea to shave his beard, not hair, as a way of Wyatt changing him as he had done to other stars.
It turns out that when Bryan went under the ring, there were two barbers under there to shave some hair that way Wyatt could show that he changed Bryan.
As a result, Bryan got into some hot water with his wife Brie Bella as she doesn’t like him with a shaved head. However, he jokingly said that she got over it. Despite his best attempt to get WWE officials to just sign off on his beard being shaved, the company wanted both his beard and head to be shaved.
“Actually, it was my idea,” Bryan revealed “And my idea was not the hair, it was just the beard. I had kind of pitched this to them as this idea of, ‘OK, how do we extend this story with Bray Wyatt,’ which is what they wanted to do, because he’s already defeated me cleanly, right? How do we do that? One of the things to me was that he’s changed people’s character so much when he’s faced them. And by him ripping out or cutting my beard, it would be this idea that he’s stripping me of part of my identity. That was my kind of pitch to them. What actually happened? They said, ‘Well, yeah, then he can cut your hair, too!’ And I was like, ‘No, I don’t really want that. I don’t want my hair to be cut.’ I kind of wanted my hair to be longer. Just wrestling wise, I like that.
“But then, the day of, we’re like, ‘OK, well, he will rip out some of your hair.’ You’d have to understand the mechanisms that are going on while this is happening. We’re in a live TV show, right? So, they pulled me under the ring, they’ve got two barbers there who are in charge of like, getting my beard off and getting hair off so there can be this appearance of him ripping out my hair and all that kind of stuff. And we have a minute and a half of TV time left on the live show. And there’s also a producer down there, who’s saying, ‘We need more hair, we need more hair, we need more hair!’ And it’s completely dark under there. We were all so crammed in this little area because there’s also like real stuff under the ring that needs to be under the ring. It’s just all in this crammed little area and these guys are cutting my hair and cutting my beard really quick and they’re supposed to just to cut X amount of hair off, which wasn’t as much as they ended up doing. But the one guy on one side did a great job. They actually both did a great job considering the circumstances. But one guy just went a little too tight and a little too high. And then, after the show, they did their best … they tried after the show for like 45 minutes to make it like not just a shaved head. But that was the best we could do under the circumstances.”
The Royal Rumble pay-per-view event goes down on Sunday, January 26, 2020 in Houston, Texas at the Minute Maid Park and airs on the WWE Network.
At this show, Bryan will challenge Wyatt for the Universal Title in a Strap Match.
