WWE Superstar Daniel Bryan returned to action at Tuesday night's WWE SmackDown tapings set to air Thursday and he recently provided his thoughts on Vince McMahon, Triple H, his future and more.
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Bryan spoke with AlternativeNation.net to promote the Royal Rumble on Jan. 25 at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia where he will compete in the 30-man Rumble Match to try to punch his ticket to the main event of WrestleMania 31.
Bryan was asked about McMahon's comments on the WWE Network about Superstars needing to step up and grab the "brass ring," which was negatively received by many backstage.
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"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," Bryan said. "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."
He continued: "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."
Bryan also said that people do have to step up in the WWE, so McMahon's comments weren't too off-base.
"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,'" he said. "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."
Bryan returned to the ring Tuesday night for the first time since having to undergo neck surgery in mid-May where he subsequently lost feeling in his right arm following the procedure.
Bryan said he will alter his in-ring style, but not because of the injury rather due to him feeling the need to constantly evolve the way he works in the ring.
The former WWE World Heavyweight Champion also said that he never asked Triple H about his vision for the future of wrestling, but he likes the way "The Game" has handled NXT.
Lastly, Bryan touched on how long he thinks he has in the wrestling ring after a career-altering injury and who he would like to wrestle before all is said and done.
"Those are very difficult questions," he said. "I would like to wrestle as long as my body is physically capable of it. I love what I do, I used to do this for very little money. It's one of those things where, I do this because it's fun, being with WWE is the first time I ever made any real money doing it. It's just a blast, it's my passion. It's like asking a musician how long do they want to play music for. It's very difficult to grapple with the idea of not being able to wrestle any more, but you also have to come to the realization that this is a very physical business, and your body will only last you so long."
He added: "So I would like to say that at some point I would have the mental intelligence or maybe the mental support from my wife or somebody, to know, 'Okay, it's time for you to stop, because if you don't, you're going to have to replace your hips, your knees, all that kind of stuff.' So I don't know when that time will be, but I'd like to wrestle as long as I can, but at the end of it still be able to maintain a healthy lifestyle afterwards."
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