News broke last July that both Edge and Daniel Bryan had joined the creative team for Friday Night SmackDown on top of working as wrestlers for the Blue Brand. In a new interview with TalkSPORT‘s Alex McCarthy this week, Bryan finally shed some light on what his role entails and humbly admitted that he isn’t apart of some of SmackDown’s best angles of the moment.
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“It’s interesting because, one, I don’t have that big of a say [laughs],” Bryan said. “Sometimes something really great will happen on SmackDown and somebody will say ‘oh, that’s Daniel Bryan!’ Like, that’s not me! One part is our performers — we have incredible Superstars. Cesaro is a no-brainer. When you say ‘Daniel Bryan helped Cesaro’ — no. All I did was ‘hey this guy is really good. We should put him on TV and use him!’ [
“Apollo Crews, I don’t have anything to do with Apollo Crews stuff. He’s just great,” he continued. “But it is rewarding to see people that you know are talented get opportunities and knock it out of the park. There’s a certain joy to that.”
He also mentioned how he approached William Regal, who instructed him on the importance of being a mentor to others.
“So yeah, there is something to that, the idea of helping people and from a human perspective we all want that,” he said. “For a long time, when you’re young you’re like ‘I want to achieve this, I want to achieve this!’ but as you get older it’s ‘I want to help here, I want to help here’ and it’s just a different perspective.”
He later delved into why SmackDown has been a consistently good product lately.
“It is cool seeing how great SmackDown has become and I also must say, part of that, that has nothing to do with me, is from someone who just sees performance different in the ThunderDome to how I ever would have thought it, that brings it to a whole new level is Roman Reigns,” he said. “The character work and the way that he’s worked since returning and being in the ThunderDome I think has improved the quality of our television a great deal.”
Bryan, Edge and Reigns will battle over the WWE Universal Championship on Night Two of WrestleMania 37 on April 11 inside Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium.
