WWE Superstar Daniel Bryan recently spoke with WrestlingINC.com during his promotional trip in India. Below are some of the highlights from the interview.

On if being one of the first “indy darlings” in WWE made things hard for him in the company initially:

At first, I think there were a lot of misconceptions about the guys who wrestled for a long time on the independents, like, “Oh, they can’t make it in the WWE, because it’s just a different… it’s a larger arena”. I would wrestle sometimes in front of as few as 15 people, but also sometimes in front of thousands of people on the independent scene, but that’s very different from wrestling in front of ten thousand people every single night. It’s a different audience; you didn’t see a lot of kids at the independent shows. There weren’t a lot of 5 year old kids coming to the independent shows. So you have to wrestle for those people too, and the thought process was that, somebody like me – I’m just an average size guy. That’s not what captivates the kids’ imaginations, right? When they see someone like John Cena, who literally looks like Superman; what am I going to do to capture those children’s imagination? And even when I was a kid, what captured my imagination? Jake “The Snake” Roberts, people with animals, people with fancy face paint, and all that kind of stuff.

“There was a lot of hesitation, as far as like, “Wait a second, how is this 5’8″, 190 pound average person going to connect with these people”, in what they call as “superstars”? We’re called superstars, so, “How is he going to connect?” And that was the biggest question mark. They had a lot of doubts about me for a long time, but the real benchmark, for if somebody can connect with the WWE Universe, is if they connect. So it doesn’t matter if you’re big or small or whatever; if I go out there and the fans react, well then I’ve done my job.”

On other independent stars such as Kevin Owens and Finn Balor doing well in WWE:

“I think it’s a natural evolution of what happens. Because, RAW right now is three hours long, right? So what happens is, before, when RAW was two hours, you didn’t see many long matches, and there were separate brands. There was RAW and Smackdown!, and you didn’t see people on both shows very often. Well now, we have a three hour RAW and two hour Smackdown!, so guys are wrestling long matches on both shows. And who’re going to stand out on that kind of platform? Guys who know how to be different in the ring, who can go out there and wrestle a 10, 12, 15 minute match twice a week, and not have the fans get bored by it.

“Because realistically, if you take wrestlers from the previous generations, and if they had wrestled as much on television as we have, they would be over exposed. But then, you won’t like them as much. That’s one of the biggest battles our generation faces; the previous generations’ battle was getting exposure, trying to get exposure. Now our battle is over exposure, and those who can handle over exposure the best are the ones who are popular, and incidentally, people who handle over exposure are the ones who’ve spent years wrestling in all the different places. So they know how to interact with people in different settings, and that kind of stuff. So I think it is natural that the independent stars are the people coming up and doing very well.”

On Kane’s longevity in WWE:

“So a lot of it is, he is very smart. He knows what he is doing. But also, you have to, and this is for all of us. The same applies for my popularity, for Steve Austin’s popularity… a lot of it depends on luck. If he gets a bad injury, at a certain time in his career when he is getting a big opportunity, all of a sudden, maybe his career in the WWE isn’t as long. If one thing happens this way instead of that way, he may not still be in the WWE. But, that said, he’s got really lucky breaks, and he’s good enough to capitalize on those breaks, and that’s why he has been here for so long. He’s smart, he’s really good at what he does, and for the most part he’s entertaining.”

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