Daniel Bryan Says He Tried To Get Out Of The WrestleMania 37 Main Event

Daniel Bryan recently talked to BT Sport about his WWE WrestleMania 37 main event, admitting he actually tried to get out of the big match.

On his ring gear for the match:

"It’s an interesting dichotomy between the differences between the three of us. If I could get away with just coming out and looking jacked like Roman, I would do that,” Bryan admitted. “Because I’m not jacked, I feel like I have to wear something. Every week I wear the t-shirt, so maybe this week, I’ll wear the hoodie, and Edge has his big jacket and all that kind of stuff, but it was really weird because as I came out, I just really wanted to savor the experience because it might be my last WrestleMania. So I just wanted to try to enjoy it."

On having fans back for WrestleMania:

"Am I aware of them being there? Yeah,” Bryan stated. “Do they provide a new sort of energy? Yes, but it’s interesting also because I don’t feel a lack of energy when I wrestle in front of no fans, but I’m also one of the very few people who loved wrestling at the Performance Center in front of no people.

"It was so weird. It gave me this weird energy, wrestling in front of no people. ‘This is really just strange and bizarre,’ and I love unique circumstances, but definitely wrestling in front of people, you’re aware of it, and one of the things that I really like about wrestling in front people vs. the Performance Center in front of nobody or the Thunder Dome, which is people on screens but piped in audio, is the instantaneous feedback of whether or not people like something. I was just very curious.

"I was very curious the whole time to see who was going to get booed, who was going to get cheered and not just for our match for every match, but specifically for our match, I was like, oh this is going to be interesting. I thought for sure Roman was just going to get massive cheers because he’s been  the coolest TV character that we’ve had in a long time, and so when he came out and got booed, I was like, oh, that’s a bit of a surprise."

On trying to get out of the match:

"I don’t know. I kept trying to get out of it to,” Bryan laughingly said. “I was like, ‘This is a heck of a story. 10 years to the day that he was forced to retire.’ Gosh, it was shortly after Elimination Chamber and in the build-up to the singles match I had with Roman at Fastlane. I was like, this is going to be a stick Daniel Bryan in here thing. Not to say that I didn’t want to be a part of it, but I just thought it was such a strong main event just the two of them. Everybody has their thing.

"The weird thing is WrestleMania 30 felt like it was going to be Batista and Randy [Orton], and it felt like with the way that the crowd was reacting to Batista and Randy, it kind of needed me in there. This one didn’t feel like it needed me, but it’s all water under the bridge now. Maybe that’s part of the thing is this constant thing in the back of my mind being like, ‘Hey, I’m not sure I should be in this match’ is one of the reasons why I had that weird reaction to actually being out there on WrestleMania. I would say it to [people backstage], and I don’t know if they were just being polite, or if they were just like, ‘Hey, this is what we’re doing regardless of whether we agree with it or not.’"