Daniel Bryan Discusses AJ Styles, Cruiserweight Classic, CM Punk at UFC 203

“Smackdown Live” General Manager Daniel Bryan recently sat down with Philly Voice to promote tonight’s show from the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. He discussed a number of topics, including AJ Styles, the Cruiserweight Classic, CM Punk’s fight at UFC 203, and more.

Below are some highlights from the interview:

On what he thought when AJ Styles finally signed with WWE:

“I didn’t know he was signed until he kind of showed up. I heard rumors or whatever. So there wasn’t that kind of like, ‘OK, they officially announced they’ve signed AJ Styles. Oh, no. What are they gonna change his name to?’ Whatever, you know. There was never that period.

“He’s so adaptable. He’s done short TV matches in TNA. And he’s done long matches. I know in WWE that he’s got the kind of style and kind of personality where I knew he was gonna do well. It was just a matter of how long it was going to take him before people within the company started to see how good he is. It was relatively quick.”

On the WWE Cruiserweight Classic:

“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.”

On CM Punk’s fight at UFC 203:

“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.’”

You can read the entire interview at this link.

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