Sam Roberts recently invited SmackDown Live General Manager Daniel Bryan to be featured in his Wrestling Podcast for an in-depth interview.
During the interview, Bryan spoke at length about the possibility of returning to the ring. The former WWE Champion spoke about how having a baby with Brie Bella changed the way he thought about the subject.
“It is a different thing now, which is weird,” Bryan said. “You see your baby, and you want them to have–not everything that they want, but to be able to pursue a dream and that sort of thing, and just this idea of like, okay, I feel that I can still wrestle, and all the tests say that I can still wrestle, but they are not allowing me to wrestle so what kind of example is that setting?”
Bryan continued, “Somebody is telling you that you can’t do something that you love but you still want to do it, so it’s kind of like, well perhaps I should just listen to them because it’s easy, and a steady paycheck, but you know I have a baby and all that kind of stuff. It is kind of the opposite thing of saying, hey, don’t let someone stop you from pursuing your dream and do what you love.”
Additionally, Bryan claimed that if he were to return to the ring as an active competitor, he wouldn’t be working the schedule that he was accustomed to prior to retiring from the ring a couple of years ago.
“Also, the idea now is not to be someone who had done 227 matches as I had done in 2013, which is probably why I needed neck surgery in 2014. I have no ambition ever to do that many wrestling matches in a year,” said Bryan. “I would be more than comfortable doing 50-100 matches a year. I enjoy wrestling, so it would be interesting to see the amount of number of matches that would satisfy me artistically as far as a creative outlet versus I don’t want to spend a lot of time away from home.
“It is a weird conundrum, which is why I believe that Jerry Lawler had the best career ever because he spent all those years in Memphis, and that Memphis territory was relatively small as far as size wise. They did an incredible number of viewers on television, but a lot of those drives were like two hours from his house. You can wrestle like 150-200 days a year and still be in your bed most nights, every night. He had the greatest career ever. Out in Washington, there is this Independent company called DEFY, but they only run shows like once every couple months, maybe once a month; but I was thinking to myself, man, if we can only turn that into a small territory where I can still work two shows a month and go out there in my spandex battle jammies and do my thing.”
You can listen to the entire episode of The Sam Roberts Wrestling Podcast featuring the interview of Daniel Bryan at NotSam.com.