Daniel Bryan Wants To Be Fueled Creatively, Worries Miz Will Take Credit For SummerSlam Match

Daniel Bryan is already having a successful week. He was announced as the feature player in WWE 2K19 Showcase Mode on Tuesday. And this Sunday he’ll finally get to punch The Miz in the face at SummerSlam.

The leader of the “Yes” Movement spoke to GameSpot about his longstanding rivalry with Miz and how Sunday may not settle the argument of who is better. 

“So, there’s various forms of truth to (Miz is better) in the sense of there was a PPV where I wrestled Big Cass, and he wrestled [Seth] Rollins, and by far, the much better [match] was Miz versus Rollins. It was a fantastic match, but Rollins was also in that match, and so, you can say that from that perspective.

“His promos are on a different level than mine are. That’s just the reality. I’ve worked on my promos a lot, I’ve gotten a lot better over the last several years, but he has an innate ability in interviews to be… he’s fantastic. So, it’s hard for me to argue that point other than on a night after night basis. If you were to go to live events, or anything like that, and compare the Daniel Bryan match, and say like, “Who’s better,” I think most fans would say Daniel Bryan’s better, but we just haven’t seen a lot of that on TV yet.”

Bryan continued by saying, “if (the SummerSlam) match is great then he’s just gonna say it’s because of him.”

The history between the two dates back Bryan breaking into WWE as Miz’ NXT rookie during the inaugural season of the show. Bryan believed being paired with Miz would make for great television. It did not.

So, we were complete opposites in how people viewed it. It’s style versus substance. It’s a very interesting thing. I thought, ‘Oh man, this is gonna make great television.’ Instead of making great television [with NXT], we did things like monkey bar challenges and who can drink a soda the fastest.

The infamous Talking Smack segment was perhaps the great television Bryan knew he and Miz could make all along. While he wasn’t cleared by the doctors at the time, the story was authentic. 

The match with Miz on Sunday may not be the last time we see the two in the ring together. A rematch wouldn’t bother Bryan, so long as it’s creatively fulfilling. 

“I focus on the variables that I can control, which is to put out the best performance as possible, and to me, I’m just interested in things that challenge me creatively, and to do things that I enjoy within wrestling. So, whether that’s with Miz, or whether that’s with A.J. Styles, or whether that’s against Shinsuke Nakamura, or Samoa Joe, it doesn’t really matter who as long as it’s creatively fulfilling.

On the flip side of that, I just don’t want things that aren’t creatively fulfilling, so I don’t care what you do, as long it doesn’t put me in this mental funk, where I just feel like, ‘Oh man, I can’t believe I have to do this today.’ But anything other than that, usually I’m just happy to be back wrestling.”

Fightful will have live coverage of SummerSlam on Sunday, including a post-event podcast.