WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2, 2014—8:42 P.M.
Contemporary apartment buildings line Fulton Street, a narrow city block with a cluster of trendy restaurants and bars, including Rock-n-Sake Sushi. Outside, a minivan cab pulls up and delivers Daniel Bryan and Brie Bella to their evening dinner destination. Brie, a WWE Diva turned reality TV star, glides out and instantly turns the heads of passersby. She’s followed by Bryan—affectionately referred to by Brie as “Sweet Face”—who hops out of the vehicle in his gray lace-up TOMS and plaid button-down, his signature outside-the-ring gear.
The couple enters the restaurant, spies the menu, and advances toward a table in the far back corner. Later, immersed in fairly loud pop music and dim lighting supported by neon jellyfish lamps overhead, Bryan explains it’s “not our kind of scene,” but the food—fresh fish and crisp salads—is good, with the Yelp reviews to support the claim.
Plate after plate of small dishes start descending upon “Braniel’s” table as the two get close for conversation and recaps of their respective days apart. They snap loose their chopsticks and dig in to a variety of shared specialties. Tuna tacos, cucumber salad, sushi rolls, gyoza, green tea, and a PB&J roll for dessert (remember: sweet tooth) are all slowly enjoyed by the duo in between conversation and giggling, like any other couple at dinner. They pause only for a WWE fan who discovers them and asks for a quick pic. (Beautiful Brie plays photographer, ironically.) To some, this interruption might be a faux pas, but “the People’s Couple” is happy to oblige.
After finishing his food, “Daniel-san” scrolls through his iPhone while Brie leans in to take a look, a glow from the device illuminating what’s easily the most gorgeous face in the restaurant. The days ahead will be fast and furious, as they know. They’re content tonight because they’re together.
I am not a natural meat eater. When I was a child, my dad would go hunting and bring home big deer and elk, so we’d have a freezer full of deer and elk steak. My mom would always cook it for dinner, but I never really liked it. I think it was the texture, but it could have also been that I’d see my dad hanging the carcass at his friend’s place. It was jarring to see the dead eyes of such beautiful creatures. I would shuffle the meat around my plate in an attempt to make it look like I ate more than I did, then go after the green beans and mashed potatoes.
Whenever it was up to me to make food for myself, I always went for things like peanut butter and jam sandwiches. I was a little spoiled in that regard because my mom always made homemade jam out of the raspberries in our garden, not to mention her homemade bread.
As I started trying to learn about building muscle, I read the fitness magazines, all of which told me I needed a high-protein diet filled with meat; chicken and tuna seemed to be their gospel, and it was preached in every magazine. I hadn’t learned to question the media yet, so I just did my best to gulp it down.
In 2004, when I met Austin Aries, I was surprised to learn he was a vegetarian. He was in great shape without eating any meat, and I really looked up to him for that. Separately, I switched from reading predominantly fiction books to predominantly nonfiction for the next several years, and all of a sudden, I had a growing awareness of the horrible condition animals were kept in within factory farms, as well as the substantial increase in carbon emitted in the production of meat, as opposed to plants. I found that when you get deep into science and world problems, a lot of issues start running together. In 2007, inspired by Aries and the books I was reading, I tried going vegetarian. Unfortunately, I didn’t do it correctly and ate things that were easy instead of eating things that were healthy. I’d eat tons of bread just to feel full. It took a toll on my body, both in the way I looked in my spandex and in the way I felt. I was exhausted all the time and had no energy, and after about four months, I thought vegetarianism just must not work for my body. Had I actually spoken with Aries about how to do it properly, or if I’d read a book on the subject, I’m sure I would have seen the error of my ways.
A few years later, in 2009, with all the hard grappling and kickboxing training I was doing, I ended up getting three staph infections. One isn’t so uncommon when you’re on mats all the time. They scrubbed the gym every day, but there’s bound to be bacteria on the mat with all the people coming in and out. But then I got a second infection and a third that December, which scared me because I had finally been signed by WWE and was just waiting for the call from them to come start. I worried that if they needed me for TV and I told them I couldn’t do anything because of my staph, they’d fire me without even being given an opportunity.
I thought it was strange that other guys at the gym who trained just as hard as I did, if not harder, didn’t seem to be getting any infections at all. It’s not as if there was a staph epidemic. So after the third one, I had a lengthy discussion with my doctor in Las Vegas. We discussed not only my staph infections—which he attributed to my weak immune system—but my elevated liver enzymes and high cholesterol as well. He suggested going vegan, with the theory being that meats, cheeses, milks, and some other foods take a lot of energy for the body to digest. By eliminating those things, I’d free up more of my body’s natural energy to fight off bacteria. If I did it, he expected me to see a huge improvement in my overall well-being, as long as I did it properly. This time I did.
My doctor gave me a list of books to read before switching to the vegan lifestyle. I read The China Study, Thrive, and Becoming Vegan—and they gave me a better understanding of how to eat to increase my health and keep my strength.
At first I had a really hard time with this new diet, but the longer I did it, the better I felt. It required a whole new way of eating, especially on the road. I would bring most of my own food, because oftentimes there would be nothing healthy and vegan to eat that had the protein I required. It was frustrating, especially after shows, when Sheamus and Ted DiBiase would eat fast food and all I had was a dried-out hemp bagel with almond butter on it. Sometimes all I wanted was just something warm, but there was very little available. Daytime food became frustrating for the guys, too, because finding a place that fit my needs was often difficult. There was a period when William Regal was riding with us as well, which made it harder because he needed to eat gluten-free. Between him avoiding gluten and me being vegan, the two of us were driving Teddy and Sheamus insane.
My diet also had implications for how people saw me. My first NXT match against Chris Jericho went really well and when Chris got to the back, he expressed to Vince McMahon what a great job I’d done. As Chris tells it, Vince responded almost in disgust, grunting and then saying, “Him? He doesn’t even eat meat!”
My family’s reaction to me turning vegan was just as funny, especially with my dad being such a big hunter and meat eater. Still, they were supportive and did their best to make me food when I was back visiting. For my birthday, my mom even went through all the trouble to substitute vegan ingredients into her pumpkin cake, my favorite of all desserts. She didn’t know much about veganism, but she tried to learn just for me.
Despite the difficulties and frustration of finding food on the road, I felt the best I had in years. I had energy, slept better, and overall, felt pretty good. It helped that when I was living in Las Vegas there was a vegan place called Red Velvet Cafe that made amazing cupcakes. I worried that I wouldn’t have anything fun to eat on my cheat days, but I ended up having nothing to worry about, because those cupcakes were better than regular cupcakes!
My diet was based on fresh fruit and vegetables, and I used things like beans, quinoa, and tofu for my protein. Soy was the predominant source of available protein on the road; I was constantly in search of places that had unprocessed veggie burgers, and most of them had a large quantity of soy in them. Unfortunately, a lot of soy is genetically modified, and shortly after WrestleMania in 2012, I started getting really sick again. I couldn’t figure it out for a long time, but then we did a blood test and found out I had a severe intolerance to soy.
When I was home and cooking my own food, avoiding soy was easy. Being on the road, however, was a different story. I tried going soy-free on the road for a while but became more and more frustrated at all the vegan foods I could no longer eat, leaving me with no good alternatives for protein. I was drinking four or five vegan protein shakes a day, and the whole thing was driving me crazy. With a heavy heart, I made the decision to start adding some animal products back into my diet. It almost made me feel defeated, as if I had taken a stand but then failed.