SUNDAY, APRIL 6, 2014—11:12 A.M.
The first Superstar on the coach bus headed to the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, Bryan receives the genuine support of all who step aboard and shuffle down the aisle for the biggest day in WWE—Arn Anderson (“DB! This is your week,” he exclaims), the Miz, Mark Henry, and others. Once he’s arrived and inside the massive stadium, Bryan rolls his suitcase and the modest “Makin’ Groceries” Whole Foods bag he’d picked up earlier in the week toward the Superstars’ quarters. He finds his spot among his fellow warriors in the locker room and carves out his niche.
As he’s expressed this week and for the past several months of his developing Movement, a sea change feels imminent. Should he succeed tonight, WWE may never be the same .
“Things will change because expectations have to change,” Bryan declares, addressing Triple H and The Authority. “What ‘they’ think someone needs in order to be a successful Superstar has to change. Whether I win or not, my popularity has spoken for itself.”
Tonight at WrestleMania 30, the “People’s Couple” has a rare opportunity to emerge as a power couple (though they’d likely prefer never to be given such a moniker). Daniel Bryan and Brie Bella could emerge from the Show of Shows with the top prizes in their divisions—not unlike Triple H and Stephanie McMahon themselves had done in 2000. To Bryan, it’s not about the grandeur, however.
Midday inside the Superdome, near the foot of the entrance ramp of the WrestleMania set, “Braniel” reconnects after their morning apart. As much as this night means to Bryan, it’s also a significant event for Brie, who’s vying for the ladies’ top title in the Divas Championship Invitational. It could very well come down to sister against sister, among several other possible outcomes weighing on the Total Divas star’s mind. She—like Bryan—needs to be prepared for anything.
“I just try to tell her to go out there and do what you do,” Bryan encourages. “Last year, [Brie and Nikki’s] match got cut from WrestleMania, and that’s hard because that’s one of the reasons they came back. They wanted to wrestle at WrestleMania. [Brie has to] try not to get caught up in the distractions and drama that are inevitable.”
Their ringside huddle shifts elsewhere, much like the “Yes!” Man’s face, which is slowly changing. The jocular Goat, as the bearded star is likened to, starts to resemble an American Dragon as he internally prepares for the battle (or battles) beyond at WrestleMania.
As you can imagine, I was ecstatic about the opportunity to main-event WrestleMania. There is no higher mountaintop in professional wrestling. I was also a little overwhelmed because not only did I have the biggest matches of my career, but also Bri and I had bought our very first house together the week before and we were getting married a mere five days after ’Mania. The logistics of everything that needed to be done that week to make sure everything would go off without a hitch were very stressful, as you can imagine.
The timing of our wedding ceremony was based purely on the filming needs for the season two finale of Total Divas. Originally Bri and I wanted to have our wedding outdoors in Washington State, which meant we would need to wait until summer for ideal weather. Total Divas offered to pay for our wedding if they could shoot it, and, though hesitant, we said yes. Weddings are expensive, and ours would be especially, because Bri has such a large family. We still wanted to have it in Washington, but when the producers told us the second week of April was the last possible weekend they could shoot it, we realized an outdoor wedding at that time of year would be too risky in the Northwest. We talked about it and decided to get married in Sedona, Arizona, a beautiful desert area about an hour and a half north of Phoenix. We wanted to get married outside surrounded by nature; plus, Sedona was where we spent Valentine’s Day the year before, so it seemed like the perfect place. And it was.
Bri did most of the planning for the wedding—not “our” wedding, “her” wedding, as she referred to it—which was very helpful, but I was still put in charge of managing some things. Most importantly, I was completely responsible for our honeymoon. So, while preparing for this huge moment in my career—wrestling in two matches in front of seventy-five thousand people and so many more watching around the world—I was also managing the details of our honeymoon trip. Getting all that in order was fun, just stressful given the timing.
Closing on our new house was just circumstantial as well. We’d been kind of looking at houses after renting for so long, but were content to wait to buy anything until after the wedding. There was one specific street we always walked down whenever we’d take Josie on walks, where people greeted one another and neighbors seemed to know each other. All of a sudden, I stumbled upon a perfectly sized and inexpensive house that had opened up on it. I was really excited about it and wanted Bri to take a look at it. Unfortunately, she was on the road doing media for Total Divas and within days of going on the market, before Bri even got home, someone apparently bought it. No big deal, we thought; if it wasn’t meant to be, it wasn’t meant to be. Two days before we left for WrestleMania week, our real estate agent—who was Matt Bloom’s (a.k.a. Tensai’s) wife, Sarah—called and told us the previous buyers’ financials fell through and, if we wanted to, we could take a look at it. This was just three hours before we were leaving for Sedona to check on the wedding venue and a couple of other things. We couldn’t pass up the chance, so right before we left, we swung by the house to check it out. Bri loved it. It was small and cozy, and she envisioned ways we could remodel it to make it our own. As we were leaving the place, two more potential buyers were coming in to look at it. By the next morning, we put in an offer that was ultimately accepted. It was a very opportune thing.
It obviously wasn’t ideal to have all of these things going on while preparing for the biggest matches of my career. I would have liked to be a hundred percent focused on WrestleMania during that week. But life is rarely ideal, and these were all good things, so I rolled with the tide.