I would read a lot about how to be a dad. I had never changed a diaper before we had Birdie.
— Daniel Bryan
My brain is - essentially, you take any college football player in the country, because I have had multiple, multiple concussions. I had 10 documented concussions, four post-concussion seizures and so, but, with that said, my brain is no worse than your average college football player's brain, right?
I like Everton. If I'm going to cheer for that kind of football team, I'm going to cheer for Everton. But the Seahawks are my passion.
I'm having a really hard time with this retirement thing and not having wrestling.
I think one of the things that really endeared me to people was that people got to view more aspects of my personality than most because of the different things that I did within WWE.
My wife and I are very blessed. I am very grateful for the life that we lead.
Wrestling is more of a creative outlet, and especially for somebody like me, I view it as my creative outlet. Not all WWE superstars and not all wrestlers view it that way, but that's how I view it, and that's one of the ways my mind works creatively.
Miz and I have known each other for a long time, and we really know, like, how to get at each other's nerves.
People have said to me, 'It must be nice to prove so many people wrong,' but I've never really cared about proving anything to anybody else.
I really don't know life without wrestling.
I think fans always want something new, but they want somebody who can deliver - to go out there and really entertain them and have good matches.
I'm definitely an underdog.
That is one of the coolest things about WWE and wrestling in general. The fans have this very unique voice and this very unique power, and in no other sport and no other form of entertainment can the fans make their voices heard and it effect change.
If you watch dogs play, they run and they fight, but they don't fight to hurt each other. They just play. And that's been me my entire life.
I used to be vegan. I'm not anymore, but I don't eat hardly any meat. But it's nice for me to go to a place like Chipotle where I can get some fresh veggies, some brown rice, some black beans, and all that kind of stuff.
My diet is very kale-heavy. It's so nutrient-dense. I stay away from fake processed stuff.
I love sweets. Like, every week of my life, I've had a cheat day.
One of the wonderful things about wrestling, to me, is that you can protect people who have had head injuries.
I've lifted weights ever since I was a teenager, but I started going more towards the Olympic weightlifting style, which is clean and jerk.
Smaller wrestlers are built for more exciting matches.
Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao was one of the worst boxing matches I've ever seen, but millions of people watched it because of the personalities involved.
I feel like I'm not the greatest general manager in the history of general managers, but I do OK, and I'm learning as I go. I try to just do my best with it.
The blessings wrestling has given me have allowed me to find some new passions, but it's really hard when you've got that first love, and nothing really replaces it.
I keep trying to convince people that I'm OK to wrestle, and I think that's probably the hard part. A lot of times I'm trying to convince myself, too, that I can wrestle. It's really hard, because the concussion issue is very subjective, and that's the part that a lot of people don't understand.
I loved wrestling in Philly. It was such an exciting time in my life. That really helped me grow and think differently. It was also just a lot of fun.
My mind thinks in wrestling. As I'm thinking of things and my mind is being creative, it constantly keeps going back to wrestling. That's my inspiration, and to not be able to express that puts me in a spot where I almost don't know what to do with myself.
If it weren't for the Internet, WWE probably wouldn't even know my name. If I had to rely on 'Pro Wrestling Illustrated' to get my name out there, it would have been a much more difficult road.
My passion is the wrestling.
With wrestling, you can't describe how that connection with an audience happens. I can't teach anybody how that happens. The bad things that have happened to me in WWE have made that connection stronger.
I wasn't a great athlete.
I loved playing football, but I hated the games because it's a lot of pressure. I just loved putting on the pads and hitting my friends.
WWE doesn't owe us anything.
A lot of people thought you couldn't be a top-level athlete as a vegan, but people like Mac Danzig and Jake Shields are proving that's wrong. And it's better for me as a performer.
Me, Shinsuke Nakamura, and Lyoto Machida, former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion, all shared a two-bedroom apartment together.
My health is 100% more important than coming back to wrestling. Being a good father is more important than going out there and expounding on my belief that doing more hammerlocks in wrestling is good for the business!
Every year, I say the Seahawks are going to win the Super Bowl. There's no doubt in my mind every single year. And you have to keep in mind this was well before the Seahawks were good. This was, like, 2-14, drafting-Rick-Mirer Seahawks. I would still be saying they were going to win the Super Bowl.
I think whatever you have in your life, my opinion is that if you know that there's something wrong, you try to fix it.
In combat sports, personalities are what draw.
When I first got to WWE, the head of talent relations was John Laurinaitis, who is now my father-in-law, and the first thing I thought when I saw everything that he had to do is, I thought, 'I would never, in a million years, ever want that job. You could not pay me enough money to have that job.'
I always think of it in terms of music. You're not always going to be a huge rock star in music, but musicians can play until the day they die. With sports, it's different. You can't always do it until the very end, and that's a hard reality of sports.
I will say this about the Miz: Even though I don't like his wrestling style, he is a very hard worker. I have a huge amount of respect for him, and I want him to do well.
I always feel like I wasn't the best trainer, because I'm really good at teaching people stuff, but I'm not good if people aren't super psyched - if they're not like me.
With my history of concussions, the WWE wants to protect me, so I've had to take a lot of neurological testing.
When I was in high school, I started getting into Japanese wrestling. For me to watch those matches, I had to order VHS tapes through catalogues, and these tapes were, like, $20 each.
I would like to do something to help people and help the world.
I feel like a lot of fans would like to see me with the heavyweight championship.
You have to realize that a lot of life is just fortune and the ebbs of flows of what goes on.
Sometimes there's cities where it's just hard to find healthy food. You just have to be prepared.
I'm pretty much friendly and compassionate to everybody. But not to people in the ring.
I'm bigger now than when I was eating meat. My lifts in the gym are better. I'm in better shape.
