Daniel Bryan on Dating Brie Bella, Getting Into Wrestling, Indy Circuit, More

Getting into wrestling right after high school: "Yeah, I left the night I graduated high school to drive down to Texas to train with Shawn Michaels actually, who's a legendary wrestler."

Oiling up: "I'm not one of those guys that oils up before he goes out there, but a lot of the guys do and I think it's because people are so self conscious about image and stuff like that. Oh, I want to look great on TV and that sort of thing. Oil I guess makes you leaner, more vascular or whatever. But it's so weird when you're standing out there and you see the guy that you're supposed to be fighting and he's walking out and he's all oiled up and super tan, glistening [laughter]."

Wrestling on the Independent circuit: "I was on the Independents for 10 years, going to Japan and going to Europe, going to Mexico and all that kind of stuff, learning all the different styles. [Interviewer: It sounds like it's less than glamorous.] It is less then glamorous, but I assume it's a lot like being in an indy rock band or something like that. It was so much fun. I just had such a good time. I was talking to one of the guys about sleeping in my car so I could go and train at this dojo so I could go to Japan and that sort of thing and never once was it like, oh man, this sucks. It was like oh, sweet. I get to go to this awesome dojo tomorrow and train with some of the best trainers that you could train with and that sort of thing.

"That's, I guess, the part that a lot of people think negatively about a lot of that kind of stuff. If you love what you're doing it doesn't seem like that much work and money has never been a big thing for me. I grew up relatively poor and so for me living on 12,000 dollars a year, are you kidding me? I have 1000 dollars a month? That's awesome! Eventually it grew to be where I was making decent money on the Independents because I had built a solid reputation. I was going to all these places internationally and that sort of thing. And yeah, there were a lot of nights sleeping in airport floors and stuff like that, but it didn't ever seem like work.

"If I had to go back to it now, for example last night we did a pay per view in Detroit. After the show, after I was done wrestling, I was able to shower. I had clean water to drink, like I didn't have to bring my own gallon of water to the show. And I just think oh, this is great. It'd be hard for me to go back to a flea market where after the show you have to get into a car and drive six hours with a bunch of other dudes who haven't showered and you're all crammed in there."

Dating Brie Bella: "It actually started as a story line and then we really hit it off. Actually it was shortly before our story line ended we kind of started dating each other. We kind of started off real slow, but now we've been together for two and half years. The WWE has a show on the E! Network called Total Divas, it's a reality show, and Brie and her sister are on that. I'm on it a little bit and I never thought I'd be on a reality show and here I am, just mugging for the camera."