WWE SmackDown General Manager Daniel Bryan recently spoke with The Philly Voice about various topics. During the interview, Bryan was asked about CM Punk’s fight against Mickey Gall at UFC 203, which Punk lost via first round submission. Bryan didn’t watch the fight but was supporting Punk for making the transition from pro wrestling to MMA.
“I did watch the fight. Punk and I have never been best friends or anything like that. I don’t even think I have his number in my phone, but I really support him in that fight. I was really hoping he would win. The reality is that even though he lost, he was dead on in his promo afterwards. It’s the whole thing with me and him, and guys like Sami Zayn and Neville even trying to wrestle. Right? It’s just this idea of you have this dream that everybody tells you that you can’t do, but you just keep going after it. Sometimes, you’re not successful, right? He wasn’t “successful” in the fight. But he fought a professional fight in UFC. That’s crazy! You know? It’s crazy and it’s awesome and he may have lost and he may have gotten beat up, but hey, he tried it. How many people would be afraid because of their ego to not even put themselves out there like that? I like to train jiu jitsu and I like to muay thai and the number of people who train all the time but won’t put themselves out there to even do like a tournament and nobody knows who they are. The ego part of you that says, ‘Well, if I go and I do it and I lose, what does that mean?’ Well, [Punk] went out and did it, right? He’s a huge public figure. I have the utmost respect for him trying to go do it. It’s hard, too. At that age, and I know at my age and how many injuries I have, just getting up out of bed every morning, you know, for the most part, I feel really good. But then to get up and go train with killers – that camp is a great camp. And so you go in there and train with great guys and getting beat up every day. It’s tough. That’s the job. The job is getting beat up every day. And right towards the fight, then you have to lose a bunch of weight. So, it’s like, ‘OK I get beat up every day, now go lose 15 pounds. Oh, just like that? Oh, OK.’”
Bryan is the color commentator for the WWE Cruiserweight Classic on the WWE Network. Bryan has enjoyed the experience and working with Mauro Ranallo.
“I’ve really enjoyed it. I’ve really enjoyed being a part of it. The concept is so good. And it’s not like this wild concept, right? It’s just unique to WWE in this day and age to just do a tournament of the best guys in the world at a lighter weight class. When they started [the tournament], the only person who was signed to WWE was Rich Swann. And now because of this tournament, so many guys are getting signed to the cruiserweight division. I think it’s awesome and it’s been really fun for me, too. I’ve never done a ton of commentary; I’ve done it here and there. But being with Mauro Ranallo, Mauro to me is the best commentator of this generation once you get past Jim Ross. He’s really good at that, so it’s been fun working with him, too. I wasn’t really nervous about it. The thing I was most nervous about was doing the guys justice. Sometimes when I would watch WWE programming – and a lot of times it’s not the fault of the announcers – they’ve got headsets on and they’re like, ‘OK, you have to plug this and you have to plug this’ and then all of a sudden in the middle of the match, and it’s a three-minute match, they haven’t talked about the guys at all. The format makes it easier, too. I don’t have to plug Doritos. I don’t have to do anything like that. I can just talk about the matches and what it means to these guys to be in the tournament. That was the one thing that I wanted to be able to do was try to talk about the guys in a way that even if they lost, say their first-round match, this tournament was good for them. It’s good exposure and that sort of thing. It is. Most of the guys, with a couple exceptions, have never been on that kind of platform before. Nobody knew how well it would do, either. It’s done really well on the WWE Network as far as the viewers and stuff. But most of those guys have never been seen by 15,000 people, let alone hundreds of thousands of people watching the Network. So, I think that’s really cool.”
Bryan explained that NXT is great because it has given wrestlers an opportunity to show the company what they can do within WWE’s structure.
“I was part of the first season of NXT, but you can’t even say it’s the same thing. And I had no part in it becoming as good as it is now. I think it’s great. It’s given guys an opportunity to show WWE that they can succeed in the WWE style. So Jimmy Jacobs, who is an old independent wrestler who I used to wrestle with, is now on the WWE writing team. We were talking about Finn Bálor, and I was a little bit frustrated because I think he should have been up on TV a long time ago. But, one of this first matches in, he gets hurt. But the reality is, would he have come in at such a great spot if it weren’t for NXT? If it weren’t for him building – WWE has gotten me into this lingo, “building brands,” but building the Finn Bálor brand down in NXT, would he have come in and gotten that opportunity without NXT? Probably not. You know, so I think it’s done a tremendous job bringing people up and all of a sudden people already know who they are. They kind of have an idea about what they’re about and that sort of thing. When American Alpha came up on SmackDown Live, they’ve been getting great reactions because of the work down in NXT. So, I think it’s really cool and a great opportunity for people.”
Bryan also talked about SmackDown Live and more. You can read the entire interview here.
