Daniel Bryan Says He Wants To Be More Hated Than Brock Lesnar

WWE Champion, The New Daniel Bryan, is in the middle of a shocking character change. This Sunday, Daniel will once again battle AJ Styles at Royal Rumble for the WWE Championship. Recently, Newsweek spoke to Daniel Bryan who shared some shocking goals for the direction of his character:

Daniel Bryan On His Heel Turn:

In true WWE fashion, this was all spur of the moment [laughs]. It was a “day of” change, and for me, it was awesome because it was a clean slate.

The old question, when I came back, was “I’m really excited to come back to wrestling but you also have to deal with expectations” personal and company expectations and all that kind of stuff. Whereas when the [heel turn] happened, there’s a clean slate. It’s a blank page where I can draw whatever I want, and that’s exciting.

One of the things I loved about independent wrestling before I got to WWE is the ability to tinker with things. I could be a different character when I’m in England or Ring of Honor or Japan or Germany. I could change all these things, but it’s been very fun to tinker almost every week. I’m enjoying things that I’m playing with from a character and wrestling perspective. That’s been a lot of fun.

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Daniel Bryan on His Character’s Direction

It’s interesting because even my bad guy stuff in WWE before, one in 2012 — that’s a long time ago now. But a lot of it is based on my confidence and my ability to understand what it is that we do, and understanding myself. That’s the most interesting thing about wrestling in general. It’s martial arts-esque, and you learn a lot about yourself by doing it. You learn about the things you believe and don’t believe. You learn how to properly move your body, different ways to get people to react and not react to certain things.

When I was a bad guy before that, I was most proud of and most reminiscent of when I was in the independents in a Ring Of Honor-type setting. But even then I wasn’t as developed a performer as I am now.

WWE has really helped in that regard and even my time off helped because as the General Manager all I did was talking segments, and that’s not what I’m naturally good at. But I’ve always been somebody who tries to do their best with everything they’ve been given, whether it’s working at McDonalds when I was 15 years-old, delivering newspapers or being the general manager of SmackDown. Trying to get as good as I possibly can, and that helps when it’s time to really turn it on and get more comfortable out there. It really made it seem more natural.

Daniel Bryan On His Match With Brock Lesnar:

Yea it’s an interesting dynamic because this was my thinking going in and it worked. Get people at first, because I want to be the most hated guy in the company. I want to be more hated than Brock Lesnar. Some people want to cheer for the bad guy. I don’t want them to cheer, I want to be hated. So far I’ve had two jumpers at live events [laughs] and that’s an old school kind of mentality. You don’t want those guys to jump but you want them to hate you. You want them to pay to see you get beat. Or pay to see you get beat up or at the very least enjoy seeing you get beat up. That’s my thing.

In the Brock Lesnar match, specifically, before we got to do much, I wanted people to see Lesnar kick my ass. But then I want them to be concerned about Brock Lesnar kicking my ass, and then I kick Brock Lesnar’s ass. And then when I lose, I still want [the fans] to be like “I wanted to see him win but you know what, I hate him. What a despicable human being this guy is” [laughs].

To read the full interview, click HERE.