Daniel Bryan Interview: Royal Rumble Elimination & More

WWE star Daniel Bryan was interviewed by IGN in accordance with the March 10 release of the WWE and “Flintstones” collaboration, titled “The Flintstones & WWE: Stone Age SmackDown!” Within the interview, Bryan discussed a number of hot WWE topics, including what he wants to do at WrestleMania 31, his controversial elimination in the 2015 Royal Rumble match, in addition to many others.

IGN inquired the former WWE World Heavyweight Champion on how he would feel about being added to the multi-man Intercontinental Championship Ladder match at WrestleMania 31:

“I’d be thrilled. I’d love it. To me, right now, the Intercontinental Title stuff is some of the funnest stuff on television. As far as the WWE goes and the stories. You have a lot of skilled performers who are getting to be in it, and going back to the thing we said before, about reaching different demographics, R-Truth has been hilarious during this whole thing. Like, trying to constantly steal the Intercontinental Championship and all that kind of stuff. And when you’re in a Ladder Match with a bunch of other people, it’s different than everything else on the show. So you really have the chance to go out there and not only be highlighted, but also actually steal the show.”

One of WWE’s most popular babyface stars spoke on how the WWE Universe took his elimination in the 2015 Royal Rumble match hard:

“I mean, I was more disappointed than anyone else, I think. [laughs] Because to go from the top where your headlining a show like WrestleMania and then come back and you’re in a spot where you don’t have anything certain for WrestleMania. It’s hard. As a WWE Superstar, sometimes you think “Okay, I know the lay of the land.” It’s going to be these matches and these matches and these matches at WrestleMania. And so if you’re not in that batch…my situation was this. I was either going to be in the main event of WrestleMania or I was going to be fifth or sixth from the top. And it’s a huge difference, you know what I mean? So it was pretty disappointing.”

Bryan discussed his triumphant return from injury in January of 2015, and how WWE has not been shy to get the most out of him:

“I don’t think I had a choice. In fact, when I was wrestling they had me in two…so in TV wrestling we talk in segments. Right? So if you do it from one commercial break and the match finishes by the next commercial break, it’s a one segment match. And so if you start in one segment and it goes through commercial and you come back, that’s a two-segment match. My first night back, they had me in two two-segment matches on Smackdown.”

Continuing, Bryan hit on how he and Roman Reigns wrestled for 12 segments, or two hours, over the course of just one week of WWE programming:

“Yeah. That was crazy. So Smackdown is a two hour show. And in that two hour show there are 11 segments. And in that particular week, between RAW and Smackdown, Roman and I together wrestled for 12 segments. [laughs] We did an entire two hour show, and more, by ourselves.”

Be sure to check out the interview in its entirety, here. Daniel Bryan also talked about the diversity of the WWE Universe, how fans may have changed his plans for “Fastlane,” and much more.