Bryan Danielson, known as Daniel Bryan back in his WWE days, had an interesting relationship with WrestleMania. He made it onto the annual event’s card nine times throughout his career, starting off with his infamous 18-second loss against Sheamus for the World Heavyweight Championship in 2012. His run-up to the WrestleMania XXX main event is well-documented, and Bryan would follow that up a year later by winning a seven-way ladder match for the Intercontinental Championship. He’d then have to retire from wrestling due to numerous concussions, but thanks to extensive rehab he was finally cleared to return at WrestleMania 34 in a tag team match involving Shane McMahon, Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn.
His last three Manias were a bit of a mixed bag. He’d enter WrestleMania 35 as WWE Champion and his program and match with Kofi Kingston wound up being the highlight of the night. The Covid-19 pandemic was in full swing a year later for WrestleMania 36, where Bryan lost a shockingly forgetful Intercontinental Championship match against Zayn that didn’t even go 10 minutes. He was finally back in the main event at WrestleMania 37 as a late addition to the Roman Reigns vs. Edge Universal Championship program but didn’t have nearly the kind of momentum compared to WrestleMania XXX.
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Danielson reflected on those latter WrestleMania matches in new interviews this week. He told The Ringer that he felt his program with Kingston was a career highlight.
“To me, the whole thing was magic,” Danielson said. “And you look at the live events, like the number of shows that he did for WWE, the amount of TV time that he filled in every time, going out there and always having a positive attitude and all that kind of stuff. What a great human being, you know what I mean? Like I said, it was my favorite match. I think the whole thing was my favorite part of my WWE career. And conversely, the most demoralized I ever was was seeing him lose it to Brock Lesnar the way that he did.”
The same can’t be said for WrestleMania 37, as Danielson told Sports Illustrated he felt “nothing” as he made his way down the entrance ramp for the match. “The American Dragon” would have one last bout with Reigns at the end of April 2021 before being written off TV and arriving in AEW at that year’s All Out.
“That was a match people enjoyed,” Danielson said. “It didn’t mean anything to me. I felt nothing. You have to remember–it was our first time back in front of a live crowd [since the start of the pandemic], and we were in front of thousands of people. I felt nothing during that match. I was trying my best, but it felt like I was going through the motions.
“Then I wrestled Roman in the ThunderDome in front of all these screens, and I loved that match,” he continued. “It was the perfect way for me to end my WWE career. Putting together the [WrestleMania] match, I could feel a little bit of my apathy, but that’s happened before and then I walk out there and I feel, ‘This is what I live for.’ That was very weird psychologically.”
