Daniel Bryan on His Injury Holding Up, Working WrestleMania Ladder Match

In preparation for WrestleMania 31, airing from Santa Clara, California, at Levi’s Stadium, WWE star Daniel Bryan spoke to SFWeekly.com while he was in the “Bay Area.” Within the interview, Bryan opened up about his return from a debilitating neck injury, which caused him to miss about eight months of action. As recently reported, WWE is said to be very concerned as to how Daniel Bryan’s neck will hold up going forward.

Daniel Bryan was asked about not toning down his in-ring style since his January return, and if his injury is still holding up:

“I actually feel real good. The only time I’ve had any setbacks was that match against Luke Harper. That was the only time I had some stuff going down my arm. Mentally when I came back I thought, ‘I’m not going to do any of this stuff. I need to wrestle an easier style.'”

“But the problem is I love doing this. I get excited when I’m in there. Shawn Michaels trained me when he had what was supposedly a career-ending back injury. So we were training in a boxing ring and he was teaching us how to take a back body drop, which is one of the bigger back bumps. I was training with Brian Kendrick, who came into the WWE around the same time as me, and we were taking back body drops and were doing them OK.”

“Shawn tells us ‘Guys like us, we need to get higher.’ And he keeps saying we need to get higher and higher and explaining ‘you do this and this to get higher.’ You know, telling us the techniques to get higher. So we keep trying but it’s not good enough. Then he goes ‘No, no, no! Like this!’ and he storms the ring and takes this huge back body drop. Like, he hit the ceiling. We were all like ‘Whoa! That was awesome.’ But he could barely walk the next day. So sometimes you know what you should and shouldn’t do, but when you love what you do it’s hard to always do what you should.”

Continuing, Bryan was asked about his involvement in the Intercontinental Championship Ladder match at WrestleMania 31, and if he had any sort of hesitation to join the match, given his injury history:

“No, no hesitation to participate. Do I get a little nervous when I think about it? Yes. Coming back I didn’t know how strong my neck was. I can do all the tests. I can go in to the performance center in Orlando and take a couple bumps, my neck holds up. Then a match at the performance center, my neck holds up. OK, now let’s see a live event — it held up. You just keep going into deeper water testing how much it will hold up.”

“I got suplexed on my head [in the Luke Harper match] and my neck held up. So now I’m in this ladder match. Will it hold up? I think so. Am I nervous? Yes, but every time you’re in a ladder match you get nervous. But it’s important to not hesitate because that’s when you really get hurt. Everyone else in the match is going to go full bore. So I have to too. If I hesitate or worry I will get hurt then that actually increases my chances of getting hurt.”

Be sure to read the entire interview, here. The man who closed WrestleMania XXX by winning the WWE World Heavyweight Championship also discussed his “personal failure” of not getting there this year.