Daniel Bryan Talks Mental Breakdown Over Retirement, How He Coped, Brock Lesnar

Daniel Bryan sat down with the Kingston Whig-Standard to promote this Sunday’s SummerSlam LIVE on the WWE Network from the Barclay’s Center. The full interview is at this link and below are highlights:

Having a mental breakdown when forced to retire:

“I had to go out to Florida (to shoot Total Divas) and we’re in John Cena’s house for four weeks or whatever and there’s cameras just on you all the time. I just had this horrible mental breakdown.”

Retreating to nature to help cope with his extreme sadness:

“That’s what I needed. I needed to get away from all of that and just get out to be by some trees. It’s hard for me. I don’t do really well in cities, which is crazy given that we’re flying in and out of these major cities every week. Brie (Bella, his wife) describes it as anxiety. And she would be accurate. I get this anxiety in cities and places like that. When you grow up in kind of a small town and when you grow up around a lot of green and trees and nature and that sort of thing, sometimes I think it’s a little mentally disconcerting to be around this concrete.”

What he was focused on – a match with Brock Lesnar:

“What I really wanted was I wanted a match with Brock Lesnar, that was my thing. But I didn’t want to go into the match with Brock Lesnar (having) that be the first time I ever take a German suplex (following) my neck surgery. So, I wrestled Luke Harper and he German suplexed me on my head and everybody was like, ‘Oh my gosh, why did you do that?!’ It’s because I have this mentality of, ‘Well, I don’t want to go in there against Brock knowing he’s probably going to give me one zillion German suplexes and not having taken a German suplex before and not having known that my neck was going to be ok.’”

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