Daniel Bryan is currently involved in a storyline with former WWE Cruiserweight Champion Drew Gulak on SmackDown. Coming off the helms of their highly-praised match at Elimination Chamber, Bryan and Gulak engaged in a mentor/mentee relationship on-screen which has led to the two exchanging challenge-based videos on social media.
On top of his priorities in WWE, Daniel Bryan and soon-to-be WWE Hall Of Famer Brie Bella are about to welcome their second child into the world in the coming months. Bryan is ready to dedicate his time to fatherhood as he stated during his appearance on The Bellas Podcast. Bryan stated that WWE has granted him six weeks paternity leave after Brie Bella gives birth and it’s not long after that period that his contract with the company expires. Bryan reiterated that he loves wrestling but he also loves being a father and just believes he’s done being a full-time in-ring competitor.
“So all of that to say, it’s a little stressful because of the date that you’re due and all that kind of stuff but, WWE has been great. They’re gonna give me six weeks paternity leave which so few places in the United States do that. So I’ll get to be home that first six weeks, but then after that, it’s not long until my contract is up. We’ve been talking about what we do from there, but to me, in my mind it’s almost, like, I think I’m just done being a full-time wrestler, and that’s the thing. I love being a dad. I will always love wrestling, and I always wanna do wrestling, but when I say, ‘Always do wrestling’, that means maybe once a month or once every couple months.”
Going back to his storyline with Drew Gulak, Bryan spoke about his wardrobe malfunction during their match at Elimination Chamber. Bryan said he did not get word about the malfunction until a few days later and when he got to the backstage area after the match, nobody brought it up. He said people only commented on the match or were upset with him for landing on his neck after taking a German suplex from Gulak.
“Well so, it’s really interesting because that’s the reaction that women have, and I think it’s because whenever it happens to women, it gets overly sexualized, right? And then so it’s like, ‘Ooo! I saw this’ or whatever like that. So I didn’t find out about it because nobody backstage — when I came to the back, actually, mostly, people were either saying, ‘Woah! Oh man that was great’, or they were concerned for my neck. Like several people very mad at me, concerned about my neck, and so, not a single person mentioned it. I went to sleep last night not even knowing it was a thing. I didn’t feel anything and you think because that’s a sensitive area, you’d think you’d feel a breeze or something like that. But, like last night it wasn’t even a thing. It wasn’t a thing this morning, until I landed and I got two text messages from friends and all my friends know I’m the worst texter, I never get back or anything like that so people very rarely — they stop sending you text messages. So that meant when I got two text messages from people saying like, ‘Dude, I saw your balls.’ I was like, ‘What?’ I feel like I didn’t know what was going on.”
On this past Friday’s episode of SmackDown at the WWE Performance Center, Bryan took on Cesaro in singles competition with Drew Gulak in his corner. To get a recap of that show, head over to the Rewind-A-SmackDown section of the site for John Pollock and Mike Murray’s review of the show.
If any of the quotes from this article are used, please credit The Bellas Podcast and provide an H/T and link back to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
