Daniel Bryan on Vince McMahon’s “Brass Ring” Comments

WWE Superstar Daniel Bryan, who returns to in-ring action on the Thursday, Jan. 15 showing of “Smackdown,” was recently interviewed by AlternativeNation.net. Bryan discussed a number of current WWE topics with Mike Mazzarone and Brett Buchanan of the website.

Bryan talked about Vince McMahon’s “lack of ambition” comments live on the WWE Network as part of the “Steve Austin Show.” Bryan gave an interesting anecdote about how he scored low in ambition on WWE’s personality test:

(Laughs) “You know it’s funny, because one of the things that he had mentioned was, he said something about the Millennials not having any ambition, right. It’s funny, because the WWE does this personality test with some of their more successful superstars, where they rank you on all of these scores, like your desire for power, and your personality, and all that kind of stuff. One of the things they ranked was ambition, and it’s funny, because in this personality assessment, I got the lowest score for ambition that the lady had ever seen. So they do it on a percentile basis, so from 0 to 100, I was in the bottom 1 percentile of ambition.”

(Laughs) “It’s funny because the lady was like, ‘How on earth are you so successful given that you seem to have no ambition?’ I said, ‘Well, that’s where there’s a flaw on the test. I have no ambition for what society says is important as far as things like money, and all that kind of stuff.’ What I am ambitious about is I want to be the best wrestler that I can possibly be, and I think there’s some sort of mistake in generations, as far as what he thinks as far as our generation lacking ambition. Our generation just wants different things than what his generation wants, and I think that’s a societal thing as well. There’s an older generation of people who say, ‘No, you guys should want this, you guys should want this, you guys should want this.’ Whereas our generation, a lot of us say, ‘No, we don’t want that, we want something different, and a lot of the things that you guys wanted, are the reason that the world is messed up. We need to change our value system.’ So that’s it, that’s a very different take on what’s going on.”

“But people do need to stand up and say, ‘No, this isn’t what I want, I want to do this. This is me, this is how I want to present myself on television. This is how I want to be within WWE, this is how I view professional wrestling, this is what I would like it to be.’ People have to have the courage to come up and say that. But the hard thing is, he was talking about the Attitude Era and how things were different, well things wouldn’t have been that much different if there wasn’t a WCW. Like guys could say, ‘Hey, I don’t want to do this. If you want to fire me fine, because I’m going to go to WCW and make just as much money.’ That doesn’t exist right now. It’s people who are okay with like, ‘Hey, my life without WWE, is as good as my life with the WWE.’ They have to be able to say, ‘Okay, if I’m going to say this is what I want to do, or else I’m taking my ball and going home.’ They have to have some sort of plan for when they take their ball and go home, they have something else to do, which is hard, especially when you have a family, and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, I have very interesting thoughts on that whole podcast. It’s a very interesting look into the mind of Vince McMahon, so it was fascinating.”

The former WWE World Heavyweight Champion also hit on his return to “Smackdown,” speaking on potential changes to his ring game:

“Absolutely, I requested my first match back to be when Smackdown moved to Thursday nights. I think it’s a good time to change the branding of Smackdown, it’s a very important show for us, to get new viewers on a new night, and I wanted to be the guy to bring the new viewers to the new night. So once I got cleared, I actually asked for the spot. My vision of Smackdown is going to be [it changing] in 2015. I would like it to be the show that would actually be more fun to watch than Raw, and this is all part of the process, so I’m really looking forward to it.”

“I will, but not necessarily because of my injury. It’s something where your style has to constantly evolve. I like to look at wrestling as the most artsy of all the martial arts. It’s a very creative process, what we’re doing is artistic creative combat. So as such, it needs to evolve. Being able to sit at home for the last 8 months and watch the product, and I see things where there’s too much of this, or there’s not enough this, and here’s what I can bring to the table that’s different, and more exciting for the fans. So yes, my style will be changing. Will it be any easier on my neck? I have no idea (laughs). Yeah, my style will be changing, but it’s not necessarily going to be physically easier.”

Check out the interview in its entirety, here. Bryan also discusses a potential MMA career, Randy Savage going into the WWE Hall of Fame, and much more.

Editor’s Note

I highly recommend checking out the entire interview. Great stuff between Bryan and AlternativeNation.net