Daniel Bryan Speaks Out On How His Injury is Holding Up, Did He Have Any Hesitation About Participating in the ‘Mania Ladder Match?

WWE star Daniel Bryan recently spoke with SFWeekly.com while in town for WrestleMania 31 Week. The full interview can be found at this link, and below are some highlights:

Since you’ve come back from your injury you haven’t eased your style very much, if at all. I was interviewing Jim Ross and he said he had a private phone conversation with Steve Austin about that bump you took from Luke Harper. Can you talk a little bit about that bump, how you’re feeling, and how your injury has been holding up in the ring?

“I actually feel real good. The only time I’ve had any setbacks was that match against Luke Harper. That was the only time I had some stuff going down my arm. Mentally when I came back I thought, ‘I’m not going to do any of this stuff. I need to wrestle an easier style.’

But the problem is I love doing this. I get excited when I’m in there. Shawn Michaels trained me when he had what was supposedly a career-ending back injury. So we were training in a boxing ring and he was teaching us how to take a back body drop, which is one of the bigger back bumps. I was training with Brian Kendrick, who came into the WWE around the same time as me, and we were taking back body drops and were doing them OK.

Shawn tells us ‘Guys like us, we need to get higher.’ And he keeps saying we need to get higher and higher and explaining ‘you do this and this to get higher.’ You know, telling us the techniques to get higher. So we keep trying but it’s not good enough. Then he goes ‘No, no, no! Like this!’ and he storms the ring and takes this huge back body drop. Like, he hit the ceiling. We were all like ‘Whoa! That was awesome.’ But he could barely walk the next day. So sometimes you know what you should and shouldn’t do, but when you love what you do it’s hard to always do what you should.”

You’ve been put in a ladder match this Sunday with a bunch of hungry guys. When you put guys like that in a ladder match on a big stage there’s a real increased risk. Was there any hesitation on your part to be in the match, considering your recent injury?

“No, no hesitation to participate. Do I get a little nervous when I think about it? Yes. Coming back I didn’t know how strong my neck was. I can do all the tests. I can go in to the performance center in Orlando and take a couple bumps, my neck holds up. Then a match at the performance center, my neck holds up. OK, now let’s see a live event — it held up. You just keep going into deeper water testing how much it will hold up.

I got suplexed on my head [in the Luke Harper match] and my neck held up. So now I’m in this ladder match. Will it hold up? I think so. Am I nervous? Yes, but every time you’re in a ladder match you get nervous. But it’s important to not hesitate because that’s when you really get hurt. Everyone else in the match is going to go full bore. So I have to too. If I hesitate or worry I will get hurt then that actually increases my chances of getting hurt.”