All of us are excited to have Daniel Bryan back as a full-time in-ring performer, but nobody is more excited about it than Daniel Bryan himself. In an interview with Sportbible.com, Bryan talks at length about getting cleared and returning to the ring. He also talks about other WWE Superstars, in terms of who he wants to wrestle, and who he he wants to wrestle again. The one performer he singled out as the very best is the Superstar he faced in his first Smackdown Live match after his return to the ring at WrestleMania: AJ Styles.
I consider AJ to be the best right now as far as in-ring performance. It was good to be able to go out there and see if I could keep up with him not only physically but mentally because a large part of what we do is mental. I actually wish we had more time; the match we had was 10-12 minutes or whatever it was and hopefully soon we’ll have the chance to do a solid 30 minutes and do our thing.
AJ Styles and Daniel Bryan were previously in the ring together way back in their Ring of Honor days. But AJ wasn’t the only Superstar Bryan gave some shine to. He has a whole list of dream matches from the Smackdown Live roster.
I want to work with everybody. When I look at the roster of Smackdown Live specifically: Shinsuke Nakamura – yep! Samoa Joe – of course. Andrade Cien Almas – sure! I did the match with Rusev – it was the first match we had ever wrestled each other before. I’ve been wanting to wrestle Rusev for a long time.
While he’s at, Bryan also mentions a couple of major players from Monday Night Raw (well, one who’s on Raw every week, one who shows up now and again):
I also think there’s something there with me and Roman Reigns, somewhere down the line. I just feel there’s something there.
And the big match that I always say – I really want to wrestle Brock. I’ve been wanting to wrestle Brock for years, when I came back from my neck surgery in 2015, it was the match that I wanted. I’m sure Brock doesn’t want it, he doesn’t care!
The whole Sportbible interview is worth a read if you’re a Daniel Bryan fan. One thing we can all agree on is how exciting it feels to have Daniel Bryan talking about these dream opponents — and to talk about them as fans as well — and know that these are showdowns we’ll probably get to see sooner or later, rather than just the pipe dreams they felt like until recently.
