Daniel Bryan On WWE Not Seeing Him As A Money Player, Wyatts, Nixed Catchphrase, Rib On Ryback

As noted earlier, Daniel Bryan recently spoke with Shafee Abraham of 97.9 WGRD in Grand Rapids. It's a great interview which you can watch above. Here are some highlights:

His original idea for a catchphrase:

"It's funny because I did come up with one on the spot, which was 'you either tap or snap.' But apparently, because that's something, I do a lot of grappling and stuff like that, and that's something people have said in the past and everything. But apparently it's copyrighted by somebody, a T-shirt company or something. So I came up with it. Oh, I'm just going to use this. BAM, I got em, and then nope, it doesn't pass copyright code. So now I just say the first word I ever learned, which was yes."

If the chants at Michigan State turned him back face early:

"I honestly don't know. Nobody ever had that discussion with me. So to me, it's interesting. I just go out there and do the best I can. But I think that might have certainly played a part in it. And especially, man, that was awesome, seeing it. So, Titus O'Neil, he had texted me. He said, 'Dude, if you're in your hotel room, you have to turn on SportsCenter.Visit Wrestling Inc. I think they'll replay it in probably about 15 minutes.' And he didn't tell me what it was, but he just told me that I was mentioned. And then I saw it, and they mentioned me and the whole Michigan State basketball thing doing the thing, and I was like wow. That's really cool. And the guy that actually started it, he's going to be coming to the show tonight with three of the guys from, I think, three of the guys from the football team. I don't know if that's true, or if it's just three of his buddies. But he is from the football team, so he's going to be coming. It'll be pretty neat to meet him."

If WWE sees him as a money player:

"I definitely feel that way (that they don't). I don't feel like they ever really, they never aspired for me to be where I'm at. There's certain guys that they see, they see somebody and they say, 'I see money in that guy.' I don't think they ever looked at me and said, 'I see money in that guy.' To this day, even with the loud fan reactions that I get, I feel like the company still doesn't see money in me.Visit Wrestling Inc. That's interesting, because you go out there and you do your best and sometimes it can be very very frustrating. That's probably one of the biggest frustrations of this job, because this is not an objective business. It's not like football, where if you're a running back and you go out there and get five yards a carry every time you get the ball, they're going to keep putting you in because the stats don't lie.

"This is not that. It is, well, he's getting a great crowd reaction, but is he actually selling tickets. And that's the company's bottom line. Well, you need people who are going to sell tickets. So, I can get the crowds to react very loudly, but does that transition into people buying pay per views? Does this transition into this or that? Or, oh, I don't think he's very marketable. He might have a niche appeal, or this or that or whatever. To me, none of that matters. I just go out there and I do my best. And it has been, sometimes it's been frustrating just dealing with the political type stuff because I am not a politician. I never have been. I've never been somebody who's like oh no, you need to do this with me, or you need to do that with me.

"Like, my whole career, I'm pretty easy going. As far as being successful in WWE, that was probably my biggest downfall, actually. And that's one of those things? so the booker for Ring of Honor, Ring of Honor was an independent company that I worked for for years, his name was Gabe Sapolsky and he ran the company from the time it was started until probably about 2007. He said when he met me, he never thought that I'd be the guy in Ring of Honor. When he met CM Punk, he thought he'd be the guy. When he met Samoa Joe, he thought he'd be the guy. Both of them were the guys for Ring of Honor. I ended up being the guy, but he never thought that because of my personality. I'm just like oh, okay. Bryan, you're doing this tonight. Okay. I'm easy going. So I just go out there, I take what they give me, and I do the very best that I can."

Fan Support:

"Gosh knows why the crowd reacts the way they do, but it's incredible. And it forces the company's hand to do things that they might really never wanted to do. Brie and her sister actually started something we call the yes movement. And it's weird. The company showed me a new T-shirt design and on the back it said yes movement. I was like whoa, they know about this?Visit Wrestling Inc. But they started it on Twitter and that sort of thing. I'm not big into the social media stuff. I'm very bad with technology. But yeah, it's really just the movement and now it's not just wrestling, and it doesn't have to be called the yes movement. It doesn't have to be called anything.

"But it's the idea that people are realizing how they can affect change, especially with something like wrestling. You've seen fans hijack segments and it's awesome, especially when it's for me. We were in Seattle, which is up from Washington State, for the Slammy Awards and it was building up a Randy Orton and John Cena title match TLC, Tables, Ladders, and Chairs, our pay per view in December, and the crowd just wouldn't stop chanting Daniel Bryan, wouldn't stop chanting yes, yes, yes.

"To me, that's really incredible, and that's just the power that people have in something like WWE, where their reactions can dictate what the company has to do. And actually that's why I'm here right now. I lost in 18 seconds to Sheamus at Wrestlemania, and I think that was supposed to be okay, now Bryan can go back to being whatever he was before. But then the people were just like, nope. Yes, yes, yes, and they started doing the whole thing."

His rib on Ryback:

"Wrestling isn't like what it was before. It's weird. We're like the lamest generation of wrestlers, as far as like... when I say lame what I mean is we all take care of ourselves. We treat ourselves as athletes. There's very few guys who even go out drinking, let alone doing the stuff that the guys were doing in the attitude era and that sort of thing.Visit Wrestling Inc. Guys really take care of themselves. Guys aren't really? we play jokes on each other, but they're harmless jokes. Like, so Ryback got a black eye wrestling, and I beat him the next day. And I told everyone it was from a freak kettle bell accident where he was using 35 pounds with the kettle bell. You just say ah, you'd expect Ryback to be doing more weight than that. Like that sort of thing. We play jokes on each other, but they're not anything that's actually harmful. Nobody's actually tried to shave it (his beard)."

Source: 97.9 WGRD