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  Another producer screamed out, “Going live in fifteen seconds!” Then, “Five, four…” The final three numbers were counted down by the motion of his hand. Suddenly the camera was panning over us and music was playing throughout the arena. The Miz, who was my assigned Pro, walked onto the set. He eyed each of us up and down, turned to the camera with his back facing me, and said, “Daniel Bryan, come here.” I stepped forward.

  The Miz started talking, but I could barely focus on what he was saying. I heard the words “Internet darling” and “a star in the minor leagues” and could only assume he was talking about me. He asked me if I thought I was ready, and ironically enough, my first word in WWE was “Yes.”

  Miz continued, “One thing you have to learn in WWE is you have to expect anything. So right now, I want you to go to the ring and I want you to introduce yourself. Tell everybody exactly who you are. I want you to show personality. I want you to show charisma. I want you to give these people a reason to watch you every Tuesday night.” He rambled on for a little longer, then added, “Oh, and have a good catchphrase.”

  During the ten years prior to my NXT debut, I had garnered a reputation for being a very skilled wrestler. But I had also garnered a reputation for not having a whole lot of charisma or verbal skills. My “character,” if you could call it that, was essentially just me, and I could be as understated or as over-the-top as I wanted to be. For the most part, if I had nothing to say or didn’t want to say anything, nobody could make me. Otherwise, since I lack a natural inclination for lighting up the microphone, if I was going to do an interview, I typically would ensure I had plenty of time to prepare.

  Needless to say, having to do a live in-ring interview on no topic whatsoever with no time to prepare was not how I envisioned making my television debut. And I hated catchphrases.

  It feels like an eternity walking to the ring in WWE when no one knows who you are. WWE fans tend to be very hard on people they don’t see as “stars,” and I could hear the groan when I came out to the Miz’s entrance music. In the ring, I did my best to stay confident, or at least appear that way. By the time the ring announcer handed me the microphone, I still had no idea what I was going to say. I ended up thanking the fans for being so accepting even though the Miz was my Pro, and I told them I wished my Pro had been my true mentor, William Regal. From there, I basically babbled on about NXT for another thirty seconds. Losing my train of thought and seeing the crowd lose their patience, I started to worry. Luckily, Miz’s music hit and out he came. Thank goodness. (Yes, I really said that.)

  Miz immediately started ragging on me—well deservedly, I might add. He asked where my personality was; where was my charisma? We bantered back and forth until he finally asked me for a catchphrase. As soon as he asked, something I had just heard in my grappling class immediately came to mind. I told him if we were to ever step in the ring and fight, he would only have two options: He would either “tap or snap.” It wasn’t the best catchphrase in the world, and I actually couldn’t use it because someone owned the rights to it, but it was enough for me to get through the interview and get a decent reaction. In response, Miz slapped me in the face and left me standing in the ring to end the segment.

  Not exactly a home run, more like a solid single. I knew I needed to keep working on talking, but I considered this a success, especially given I had no idea what was coming. And that’s one of the reasons NXT was the most unusual wrestling experience of my career: A huge part of it was unscripted, and none of the show’s Rookies knew what was going on. I didn’t know Miz was going to come out and save the interview, and I definitely didn’t know he was going to strike me at the end. Miz is self-admittedly not the toughest guy in the world, and much later on, he confessed to me that he was mildly concerned I was going to fight him for the slap.

  The rest of the episode played to my strengths, and I wrestled Chris Jericho, who was the World Heavyweight Champion at the time, in the main event of the show. Chris is a true pro, and even though the match was only five minutes and I lost, he made me look like a star. After the match, Miz started beating me up, and again I had no idea he was going to do it. Neither did he, apparently, as the instruction was sent to him from the producers through the referee in the ring. Despite the confusion and the chaos, it had been a decent debut. Yet it all went downhill from there.

  3

  “MAKIN’ GROCERIES”

  TUESDAY, APRIL 1, 2014—7:18 P.M.

  The sun’s only starting to drop when the wheels of the plane hit the New Orleans tarmac just a little after 6 P.M. If you’ve stood on a stage for a live streamed press conference for your organization’s greatest event ever, it’s already been a long day, made to feel longer with a three-and-a-half-hour flight (though easily a short skip for someone who’s made a weekend trip out of Japan). There is no jet lag to record as camera crews capture Bryan and Brie’s arrival and airport traipsing, before their ride to their hotel in NOLA’s French Quarter.

  Championships. Relationships. Nutrition. Daniel Bryan has his priorities. This is what delivers WWE’s “Yes!” Man to the familiar storefront of the Whole Foods Market in Mid-City almost immediately after getting into town. He and Brie check into their hotel room, then split: Brie to an appearance, Bryan off to grocery shop—“makin’ groceries,” as New Orleans jargon goes. It’s a common ritual for Bryan, whose weekend road routine usually includes arriving in a city on a Friday, then finding the nearest organic market and stocking up for several days of travel.

  “Nutrient density is important to me,” he explains. “Our schedule is brutal. Trying to replenish all that is just vital. You can’t always trust stores to cook super healthy. I’d rather have a protein shake and fresh fruit and veggies than a crappy chicken salad from a fast-food restaurant.” He summarizes, “It’s nice to have nutrient-dense food ready whenever you need it.”

  The produce lane is a different aisle than most WWE television viewers are used to seeing Daniel Bryan walk. He pushes a half-cart and carefully selects a serious amount of produce—vibrant carrots, greens, seven apples, seven bananas, multiple bottles of fresh juices—while fulfilling an unofficial shopping list for himself and his fiancée. He stops only to thoroughly check packages for ingredient listings and to sign an autograph for a fellow shopper/fan on top of a raspberry container sitting in his cart. Somehow, this is all routine.

  “I’ve been doing almost all the shopping for us,” Bryan says, explaining that his soon-to-be-spouse’s erratic schedule has increased since the advent of the Total Divas reality series. “But I’m not as good of a shopper as Brie,” he candidly admits. “I tend to overspend.”

  Bryan floats from section to section, seeking several days’ worth of sustenance. A squared-circle Superstar who used to carry small packets of pumpkin seeds in his jacket pockets, the “Yes!” Man is known among his peers and fan base for his unique diet. In May 2013, Bryan developed an intolerance to soy that led to him abandon veganism. But as his shopping progresses into the dessert aisle, it becomes apparent how much he still enjoys a good vegan sweet treat. Bryan raves about avocado-based mousse with carob chips, but he’s on the hunt for a specific peanut butter cookie for Brie. He ultimately settles for Uncle Eddie’s chocolate walnut flavor, which you can expect the couple will share.

  “I have a very bad sweet tooth, but I manage it. I manage it with these healthy treats,” he coyly remarks.

  This specific store location—which happens to boast a message of wholesome-food accessibility in this particular NOLA neighborhood—appeals not only to Bryan’s dietary needs but also to the principles and values instilled since birth in the natural sprawl of Aberdeen. In brief, this is his kind of place, right down to the earthy scent in the air.

  Bryan greets a cashier, pays, then heads back to the hotel to wait for his soon-returning fiancée. He’s gone from suit to T-shirt, from a stage at the epicenter of New York City to the frozen food section of a grocery store in Louisiana. Now, as he stands holding bro
wn paper shopping bags while he waits for an elevator in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel, Bryan involuntarily reminds you, by the sight of him, that he is everything a top WWE champion has never resembled. Yet in a matter of days he plans on raising up the most-coveted golden symbols in sports entertainment for the most emphatic “Yes!” succession yet.

  The elevator dings, the doors close, and his first night in New Orleans quickly vanishes as WrestleMania Sunday takes one step closer.

  It’s often said you don’t choose who you fall in love with, which I believe to be true. I also believe you don’t choose what you fall in love with. Sometimes things just grab hold of your imagination and never let go—and that’s been my experience with professional wrestling. My introduction to wrestling is one of my earliest memories, and I’ve loved it ever since.

  I say “one of” and not “the” earliest memory because my earliest memory involves me burning my butt. After every bath at my Grandpa Austin’s house, Billie Sue and I would wrap ourselves in towels and go stand by his wood-burning stove to dry off. In the cold Washington weather, the heat was always nice. One day around age four, I got a little too close and burned my little butt cheeks on the stove—so bad that each cheek blistered. More so than the actual burning, the most vivid memory is the pain I felt each time I’d sit on the toilet. I’m lucky I don’t have scars, especially since I spend so much time on broadcast television in trunks. There have also been quite a few live crowds who have seen my derriere. How would parents explain those scars to their kids?

  “If I show you, you have to promise not to tell anybody,” whispered the new kid in class. It had been Abe’s first day as a student at Aberdeen’s Central Park Elementary School, but he had already made friends. At the end of the school day, Abe was being chased around a table by my best friend, Warren, as he sang, “La cucaracha, la cucaracha! Please don’t hit me in the butt.” He and Warren came back to my house that same afternoon.

  We found ourselves in my bedroom huddling around Abe’s backpack. Warren and I were anxious and excited about what Abe was about to show us. Abe looked from side to side as if he suspected someone was watching us while he slowly unzipped his backpack. He double-checked to make sure we weren’t going to tell anybody before he reached in and pulled out a stack of magazines. Wrestling magazines. Abe handed us each a magazine, and I pored over the pictures. Men with enormous muscles in ridiculous outfits fought equally ridiculous men. There were giants, midgets, Indians, cowboys, Russians, men with face paint and spikes—I had never seen anything like it! It was magic. Warren quickly lost interest, but I couldn’t stop flipping through the pages. I convinced Abe to let me borrow a few of the magazines, and it was through their worn pages that I became hooked on wrestling.

  It wasn’t long before my parents found me reading the magazines that I was supposed to keep secret. Hiding things has never been my forte. Fortunately, I had nothing to worry about. Despite not being wrestling fans themselves, my parents weren’t upset. They actually liked the fact that I was trying to read. Plus, they saw that it made me happy.

  Before I knew it, my parents started bringing me home wrestling magazines when they saw a new one come out. Slowly but surely, I became a better reader, which was important because I missed a lot of school.

  I have a lot of harebrained hypotheses, most of which are too idiotic to be printed. Ask Nigel McGuinness about my thoughts on the evolution of penis size. But this one idiot hypothesis mildly pertains to this story, so here goes nothing.

  It is my belief that due to modern medicine, humans have stopped evolving in a way that produces healthier adults. I say this because many children who two hundred years ago would have died are now living to successfully reproduce. They thus pass on their genetic deficiencies to their children, who then pass them on to their children, and so on and so forth. I am one of those children: sick my entire childhood and even still often sick as an adult. Without modern medicine, I would have surely passed before I could procreate. Who knows, I still might. Regardless, I affectionately refer to myself as a defect.

  Bri is also a defect. I will let her explain her own defectiveness in her own book, should she choose to write one. Before we started dating, I pointed this out to her, and also told her it would be genetically irresponsible for either of us to have children as it would weaken the evolution of humans going forward. What we should be doing as a species is breeding intelligent superathletes, like having John Cena make babies with Jackie Joyner-Kersee. It became our little joke, both of us being defects. And we will, at some point, try our best with the de-evolution of our species.

  My persistent illness started with viral asthma, and, as we later found out, I was allergic to grass and trees and almost all animal hair—which didn’t stop me from trying to sleep with my beagle Millie nearly every night. Oftentimes I would wake up with my eyes swollen nearly shut. After my allergies were discovered, I began getting weekly injections (easily up to 150 shots), which helped to a degree. Still, whenever I was outside or playing sports, grass would get the better of me. I ended up getting quite a few upper respiratory infections, and there would be times I would miss a week or two of school at a time. One December, I missed nearly the entire month leading up to Christmas break. Missing so much school, I suspect, made me even less social, but on the flip side, I became comfortable entertaining myself and developing my interests.

  I still always managed good grades, mostly because school came relatively easy to me. Math seemed like a fun little puzzle for me to figure out, and I enjoyed reading. That pretty much covers elementary education.

  Being out sick all the time, I never learned to swim properly because lessons were during school. I can’t freestyle, backstroke, sidestroke. None of that. I never advanced further than beginner level. But if doggy paddling and treading water were in the Olympics, I might have a shot because I spent so much time practicing while everyone else learned how to actually swim.

  Other than swimming, being sick didn’t stop me from doing much. Despite my grass allergies, I was always playing sports, mostly because I love being outside. At different points, I played just about everything—soccer, football, baseball, and basketball. I ran track, did cross-country, wrestled, and even tried golf one summer with some clubs borrowed from a friend.

  I played every sport and wasn’t good at any of them. I never had the mentality necessary to be good at sports. They were just games to me and relatively unimportant; it was hard for me to care about winning and losing. As long as there wasn’t too much pressure, I had fun. That’s why I loved practice. Some people hated drilling, and they saw practice as work. I saw it as being able to play against my friends, with no pressure. I liked the drills in almost every sport because it was fun for me to see functional improvement.

  A good example of my athletic mindset was how much I enjoyed track. Even though I only did track for a couple of seasons, it was my favorite because there were so many events to participate in. I did shot put, threw the javelin, and ran a variety of distance races from the 100-meter to the 3,200, plus I tested my skill with the discus and all the jumping events. Again, I tried everything and was rotten at everything—especially the pole vault, which I loved. Really, what’s not to love? You run with a stick and use it to jump as high as you can and then land on a big fluffy pad. The thing is, I’m not a huge fan of heights, so I would practice and practice and practice, because it was fun, but never cleared anything past eight feet. People can high-jump eight feet.

  My only real accomplishment in athletics was being named MVP of the C squad my sophomore year in basketball. At least, I like to tell people I was the MVP. The award I got was actually a Coach’s Award for hard work, and all of the good sophomores played on varsity or JV. I suppose it’s not much of an accomplishment after all.

  Bryan with his “World Champion” dog, Asparagus, 2007

  My love of sports turned into a love of sports cards, even though I tended to look at them more as an investment than as a hob
by. My generation of kids was the first to save their sports cards because they’d be worth money someday. Back then, I thought my sister was stupid for saving her money instead of buying cards like I did. I believed the cards were going to appreciate in value, unlike my sister’s savings, which she just kept in her bedroom, accruing absolutely no interest.

  It was predominantly baseball cards at first, then expanded to basketball cards and football cards. I even had some wrestling cards. Interestingly (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), I didn’t ever like the Michael Jordan types. I ended up collecting a lot of players who were good but not necessarily stars. In baseball, instead of liking Ken Griffey Jr.—who was on the Seattle Mariners and whose cards were always worth a lot—I liked Roberto Alomar and Paul Molitor. I figured, “Oh, Paul Molitor’s so good. When people realize how good he is, his card is going to be worth money.” Sometimes I’d trade a card of Frank Thomas—who was huge at the time—for a couple of Roberto Alomars. Even though I wasn’t great at understanding the real value of sports cards, my first attempt at being an entrepreneur involved trying to sell the cards with my friend Scott.

  During the summer—weather permitting—we would set up a table outside of my house, organize our cards all businessmanlike, and tape up a sign out front that read BASEBALL CARDS FOR SALE. There was never a ton of traffic on our street, and usually our only “customers” were kids who didn’t have any money so would end up playing football or Wiffle ball in the front yard.

  After one summer, Scott and I combined all the money we saved, which was a total of $40. In our heads, this must’ve seemed like a million dollars, because we were convinced we’d be able to start this trading card empire with that cash. We only ended up being able to pay for a single box of Leaf baseball cards, which was a disappointment.