24

THE MOVEMENT MEETS THE AUTHORITY

SUNDAY, APRIL 6, 2014—5:59 P.M.

It’s the final countdown, and Daniel Bryan is suiting up for his clash with “the King of Kings,” Triple H. In the locker room, Bryan slides on his new fur-lined kickpads. “Bruiser Brody,” he plainly proclaims, hinting at the homage to the similarly feral-bearded former WWE Superstar. While changing into his unique battle armor, the Beard finds a moment to converse with his one-time mentor, the rugged William Regal. Another supporter of the “Yes!” Movement, the English grappler is elated to see Daniel Bryan take to the Grandest Stage of Them All against one of the ring’s greatest competitors, the Game. It’s probably one of the most important prematch talks Bryan will have this evening. So much history and so much respect fuel his conversation with Regal.

Beyond the dressing room, Superstars are huddled around monitors in the backstage area watching what is a WWE fan’s dream sequence with Hulk Hogan, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, and The Rock inside the middle of the ring. Mere yards away, Daniel Bryan is warming up with kicks that would make Craig Wilson proud. The air takes a beating from the Beard prior to what’s in store for the Cerebral Assassin.

Match time finally falls upon him, and in anticipation the huge crowd musters the loudest “Yes!” chant you’ve ever heard. In heavy contrast to his rival, the theatrical entrance and gold armor accentuating Triple H’s wealth of power is an unforgettable image, but it’s instantly rivaled and topped by Bryan’s simple, full-heartened gallop down the ramp to the ring. Daniel Bryan emerges on the Grandest Stage of Them All to 75,167 voices shouting in his favor. Tonight, they seek the fall of The Authority and the triumph of the “Yes!” Movement.

As they’d so desperately hoped, he does it. Bryan wins. Any other year, this victory would be any other Superstar’s WrestleMania moment. Dethroning Triple H—the Game, a thirteen-time World Champion and WWE’s quintessential competitor—at WrestleMania is something few men can claim. And Daniel Bryan does it with skill and tenacity, securing an indisputable pinfall over The Authority’s leader. But before Bryan can celebrate and move on to a triple-threat match against Randy Orton and Batista, the Cerebral Assassin deploys a brutal attack, sabotaging the underdog with a deck already stacked against Bryan. It’s “business” as usual for WWE’s nefarious villain, Triple H.

Craig and the crew from WWE.com did an excellent job chronicling my WrestleMania week. They followed me around, snapping pictures and asking questions. So did producers from WWE Network, as I was a focus for one of their short documentaries. They captured all the major moments of the week, so I feel like I don’t have to say much about it. The only thing I will mention is that I’m probably the only person to main-event WrestleMania who flew there economy class. I didn’t mind, though, because I had my future wife right next to me in the middle seat.

Despite everything going on—finalizing wedding plans, multiple crews documenting my days, and, of course, two hugely important main event matches—I was relatively calm and confident all week. I had stuff to do and my body to take care of; plus, the Superstars usually have a million signings, meet-and-greets, and media days. Truthfully, you get so swept up in the whirlwind that is WrestleMania week that you don’t have time to be nervous. The only things I was really anxious about were, first, the pain running down my arm and, second, my gear. There was nothing more I could do about the pain, but the gear I wore on WrestleMania was a very important and conscious decision I was going to have to make.

Since 2004, I’ve worn maroon in my ring attire. At the time, Dave Taylor was running a wrestling camp, and William Regal was there not just helping out, but also getting himself back into ring shape. On a trip to India, he had gotten a heart parasite, had to have his heart stopped, then started again, and couldn’t wrestle for a year. But he was finally ready to come back. I went out to Atlanta and stayed with him to help him get ready, and it became an awesome, weeklong learning experience. At the end of the week, Regal gave me a brand-new pair of maroon boots, maroon kneepads, and maroon trunks. Maroon was Regal’s signature color for a long time, and from then on, it became the dominant color in my gear. It’s a small nod of appreciation to the man who’s been the biggest influence on my career.

Even though he hadn’t ever talked to us about it back at his Academy, Shawn Michaels had some of the best ring gear ever. He also had some of the worst ring gear ever, like when he returned to WWE in 2002 after his back surgery and wore brown tights. With that notable exception and the times when he refereed in bike shorts, Shawn looked the part. My ring attire was never something I put a huge emphasis on early in my career, so when I started in WWE, I really had to step up my game as far as ring gear went.

What I wore when I debuted on NXT was just a basic, design-free maroon, which is what I liked when I was in Ring of Honor: plain. A few years later, I was reading a Jill Thompson comic called “Beasts of Burden,” which was about a group of dogs (clearly something I’d be into). Through social media, Jill saw a photo of me reading her comic and reached out to say she thought it was awesome that I liked her book. I thought it was awesome that she liked wrestling and I asked her if she had any interest in making my ring attire because I always figured comic book artists would be the best at designing ring gear. Her first design was what I wore at Money in the Bank 2011; she viewed me as the classic wrestler, so she integrated the stripe from the design of a classic Ford Mustang into the gear she made. There was so much more thought put into it than I’d ever imagined would go into something like my ring attire.

When I was involved with the Wyatts a few months before WrestleMania 30, I knew I didn’t want to wear exactly what they wore, even though that’s what I ended up doing for the short, two-week run. What I originally envisioned, long term, was appearing more like one of my favorite bearded wrestlers, Bruiser Brody. When he competed, Brody wore furry boots and a fur jacket, and he wrestled like a wild man. When I explained the idea to Jill, she immediately drew up something awesome that I had never seen before: kickpads with fur on the back. I didn’t know if it was possible, but I sent the design to my gear maker in Japan. He said he thought it was really cool and that he’d find a way to make it work. Within a month’s time, he had it complete and in my hands, but it was far too late for me to use it as a Wyatt. Unsure of my direction for WrestleMania 30 and beyond, all I knew was that, at some point, I was going to have to wear this new gear.

WrestleMania is usually the time when all the top stars bust out their most elaborate gear. Heading into WrestleMania 30, I didn’t want an extravagant robe like I had at WrestleMania XXVIII. That wasn’t me, nor was it the character fans saw on TV every week. I did have some new gear designed that looked really nice, but I kept going back and looking at my unused Brody gear, which I loved. I recognized it was a radical departure from what I had been wearing, so I just wasn’t confident it would work, yet I brought it for the trip, just in case.

On the Sunday of WrestleMania, I still didn’t know what I was going to wear, so I brought both sets of gear to the stadium. I asked Bri for her opinion, and she liked the Brody gear, but, like me, she was indecisive about it. So that day, I just put it on and asked the one person whose advice on wrestling I trust more than anyone else’s: William Regal. He liked that it was different, though he couldn’t tell if it was different good or different bad. His advice was that it was probably not the time to try something radically different. This might have been the first time ever I didn’t take his advice.

I tried on my other new gear, and it looked good. However, the Brody gear had my heart, and at the last minute I decided to take the chance. It ended up not making a difference one way or the other, but besides the pain in my arm, that decision was the biggest stressor on the biggest day of my career.

Once the gear issue had been solved, I was focused exclusively on my matches. First up was the one-on-one match with Triple H, who had this awesome entrance. He emerged out of smoke, and the lights shone on a massive throne where he was seated with three scantily clad ladies by his side. Hunter was wearing a robe and a crown, but the robe had golden football-esque shoulder pads on it with enormous spikes sticking out of each side. The crown connected to a golden skull mask that covered his face, and as he stood up from the throne, the women unclasped the robe. He slowly took off the crown, and then his ring music hit for his walk down the ramp. The decadence and splendor of the whole thing fit him well. Likewise, the simplicity of my entrance fit me. I just came out in my Brody gear, wearing my usual shirt with my usual music doing my usual entrance. What made it special was that seventy-five thousand people were “Yes!”-ing on my entrance along with me.

When you’re wrestling Hunter, regardless of when it is, you’re in a main attraction with a guy who only wrestles a couple of times a year. I’ve never been looked at by WWE as the guy to wrestle any of the iconic Superstars who come back. It was neat because a moment before the match, I was able to take a step back from the situation and think about how I’d been watching Hunter wrestle since I was a teenager. The irony was not lost on me that Triple H’s first ’Mania match, at WrestleMania XII, was the first WrestleMania I’d ever ordered. Nor was the coincidence that his first WrestleMania match was a supershort squash match against Ultimate Warrior, and my first WrestleMania match was a supershort squash match against Sheamus.

On top of that, Triple H was the first guy I’d ever been in the ring with who wrestles with an Attitude-era, heavyweight, main event style. My style in WWE is completely different, more of a fast-paced, cruiserweight style. One of the things I’d always loved about being an independent wrestler was the opportunity to wrestle so many different people with so many different styles, and this was a chance to do that on a much grander scale than I had ever done before. The match itself was a blast. It wasn’t a Triple H match and it wasn’t a Daniel Bryan match; it was a blend of both. I did things I hadn’t done in WWE before, like the front flip dive I used to do on the independents, just without doing it into the fans and without the springboard. (The last thing I wanted to do was slip while trying to spring up to the top rope on the biggest night of my career.) Triple H was great to work with, and I learned a lot from him in that one match. It’s nearly impossible to explain to nonwrestlers this learning that happens as you wrestle someone, but afterward, it made me even more disappointed that I didn’t get the experience of wrestling him and Shawn Michaels on a nightly basis the way guys like Randy Orton, Batista, and John Cena did.

Hunter and I took the crowd on a roller coaster, and when I hit the flying knee and pinned him, the crowd jumped up and down in excitement. With that win, I would, in fact, be going on to the final match of the night and contending for the WWE World Heavyweight Title. Making the moment even more dramatic, Stephanie got in the ring and repeatedly slapped me in the face, and then Hunter attacked me from behind to go after the shoulder that was “injured” in a beatdown he gave me two weeks prior to the show. As he slammed my shoulder into the ring post and whacked it really hard with a chair, the cheers instantly turned to boos.