Daniel Bryan
(Photo by Suzi Pratt/Getty Images)

Daniel Bryan Reveals He Had a Mental Breakdown Following Retirement, Talks Not Altering His Style, the Big Match He Wanted Before Retiring

WWE Smackdown General Manager Daniel Bryan recently took part in an interview with the Brockville Recorder.ca / Kingston Whig-Standard, talking about this weekend’s WWE Summerslam event. 

Bryan also talked about his neck injury and retirement, attempting a comeback before announcing his retirement, Summerslam memories and much more. You can read a few excerpts below: 

Daniel Bryan talks about people telling him to change his wrestling style after he first got injured:

“A lot of people have said, ‘Oh, you need to change your style, you need to change your style, you need to change your style. And that is very true. Steve Austin had this great conversation with me, it was during the time when I was still trying to cleared from my concussion stuff.”

“I wouldn’t have gotten to where I was if I didn’t have that style,” Bryan said, conceding that there “probably was a point where I could have changed it sooner, like when I came back from my neck surgery. 

Realistically, my style isn’t what put me out, I ended up taking a really hard hit to the head. It had nothing to do with my style.”

Bryan says he tested out his neck, talks about wanting a match with Brock Lesnar while he was still an active wrestler: 

“When I came back from my neck surgery — and I have this really bad habit, it’s like I’m a glutton for punishment — I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to see how strong my neck is and to see if it can still take some of this stuff.’ ”

“What I really wanted was I wanted a match with Brock Lesnar, that was my thing. But I didn’t want to go into the match with Brock Lesnar (having) that be the first time I ever take a German suplex (following) my neck surgery. So, I wrestled Luke Harper and he German suplexed me on my head and everybody was like, ‘Oh my gosh, why did you do that?!’ It’s because I have this mentality of, ‘Well, I don’t want to go in there against Brock knowing he’s probably going to give me one zillion German suplexes and not having taken a German suplex before and not having known that my neck was going to be ok.’ ”

Bryan reveals his favorite Summerslam moment: 

“My favourite for myself at SummerSLam was the 2013 SummerSlam. I wrestled John Cena in the main event and that was the biggest moment of my career up to that point. Being able to be out there with John, and SummerSlam, other than WrestleMania, it’s our biggest event of the year, so being put in that spot of main event an that sort of thing was really special to me. That was my personal favourite moment.”

On his post-retirement mental breakdown:

“I had to go out to Florida (to shoot Total Divas) and we’re in John Cena’s house for four weeks or whatever and there’s cameras just on you all the time. I just had this horrible mental breakdown.”

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