I think teaming with Kane in Team Hell No was really entertaining for the fans. I think WWE fans hav

I think teaming with Kane in Team Hell No was really entertaining for the fans. I think WWE fans have always appreciated my wrestling, but they wanted something more as far as personality goes, and Team Hell No really gave them that. And just being given the opportunity to be seen as a main-event guy. For John Cena to pick me as his opponent for the SummerSlam main event was huge for me. That was the biggest opportunity I've ever had. Very few people are given that kind of opportunity.
I think fans always want something new, but they want somebody who can deliver to go out there and really entertain them and have good matches. And they're not stuck on big guys anymore. I think people are slowly realizing that some of the smaller guys are really entertaining as far as what we can do in the ring. One of the cool things about wrestling is that it takes a mix. If everybody wrestled like me, it would be boring. If everybody was John Cena's size and wrestled like him, it would be boring. You need a cast of characters you need people like the Big Show, CM Punk, John Cena, Daniel Bryan, and the Divas, too. You have to have that mix. It's like a variety show.
Wrestling's so much more complex than that now, but if I had to describe calgary going solo travel costa rica myself in those terms, I'd say I'm a reluctant hero. If it were up to me, I'd be happy just to go out and do my job. My passion is the wrestling. I never pictured myself in the role I'm in now, but that's the position I've been put in.
To be honest, I don't feel like I've made it. But "making it" is different than being satisfied with what you've done. If I got hurt today, I'd be very satisfied with what I've done, but I would have said that before I even made it to WWE. I was happy with what I accomplished on the independent scene and internationally it was already calgary going solo travel costa rica much more than what people ever thought calgary going solo travel costa rica I could do and what even I thought I could do. But one of the things that keeps me going is the pursuit of constantly being better, and I haven't "made it" like I'm at a point where I'm happy to stay at this level. I was actually talking to John Cena about this. He told me Steve Austin talked to him at one show and asked him how things were going, and John said, "The show's going pretty well." And Austin looked up at a part of the arena that was tarped calgary going solo travel costa rica off the building was maybe 90 percent sold out and he said, "Back when I was here, these arenas were full." And that motivated John. There's always something to strive for. So what do I need to do to feel like I've made it? I need to be the main-event guy, the top guy, and we need to be selling out every arena every night. Maybe then I'll feel like I've done what I need to do.
For me, the honest answer is Shawn Michaels. It's sad because I've always considered calgary going solo travel costa rica him the best he trained me and I've never wrestled him. But there's also the fascination of going back and wrestling somebody like Andre the Giant or the Ultimate Warrior those guys you grew up watching as a kid just have such a special aura.
I think it's a great thing for wrestling fans. When I was in high school, I started getting into Japanese wrestling. For me to watch those matches, I had to order VHS tapes through catalogues, and these tapes were like $20 each. For somebody calgary going solo travel costa rica like me who was baling hay and working at McDonald's, that was a lot. Now, any match you want to see, you can go online and get. You can go through wrestling history and have the best matches ever at your fingertips.
And for wrestlers, it's a great promotional tool. If it weren't for the Internet, WWE probably wouldn't calgary going solo travel costa rica even know my name. If I had to rely on Pro Wrestling Illustrated to get my name out there, it would have been a much more difficult road. Look at me and CM Punk we're from totally different parts of the country, but we ended up wrestling in a lot of the same places because the Internet calgary going solo travel costa rica got our names out there.
Oh god, yes. When WWE showed footage calgary going solo travel costa rica of me wrestling at Shawn Michaels's old promotion, I was like, "Please don't show this." It was cool for the story because they had some stuff with me and Shawn, but anybody who goes back and watches their first matches calgary going solo travel costa rica is going to be embarrassed. To put your 18-year-old self on national television well, it lightens up your ego a little bit. But you know, I didn't just start out like this. I had to work hard to get good.
If I just wanted to entertain somebody, I would probably go with the six-man tag match I had teaming with Kane and Ryback against the Shield at TLC , because it's a bunch of different characters, it's action-packed, there's a bunch of big moments, and hopefully they would go, "Wow, I didn't calgary going solo travel costa rica know wrestling was like this." But what I'd really like to show them would be something more dramatic, like the matches I had against Nigel McGuinness or Kenta, or even John Cena at SummerSlam , but those might be too long for somebody who doesn't watch wrestling.
There are so many differences, but mostly I think it's in my approach calgary going solo travel costa rica to character. In Ring of Honor, I was doing a thing where I was a master wrestler that was my character. Now in WWE I'm an underdog, and that's the way I have to approach my matches. I have to fight from underneath and overcome. It's the opposite of my last days in the indies, where anybody I wrestled was the underdog, because the fans always expected Bryan Danielson to win. In WWE, the size difference is so much greater, the guys are so much bigger, and that just wouldn't make sense.
A lot of things that have worked for me were things I just started doing. When I started doing the "Yes!" thing up and down the ramp, I just did it. Nobody told me to. Same thing with the beard. Honestly, I started growing the beard because calgary going solo travel costa rica I wanted to grow my hair out and thought that the beard would distract people from my hair. And it worked! calgary going solo travel costa rica Somebody from the office came up to me recently and said, "Wow, your hair's getting long," and I said, "Yeah, well, it doesn't happen calgary going solo travel costa rica overnight."
Obviously, there were beards in sports before yours, but it feels like you were on the cutting edge of this contemporary sort of unironic beardedness. How often do people tweet or email you about other bearded athletes?
All the time. There's a guy from the Pittsburgh Steelers, Brett Keisel, and Brian Wilson, and Josh Reddick from the Oakland A's me and him had a beard-off until he cowardly decided to shave his beard during the middle of the season. Last week somebody told me I looked less like a wrestler and more like I should be the bass player for Mumford & Sons. I just think there are a lot of people who are rebelling against the conventional idea of what's attractive. And it's liberating to get up and not shave in the morning.
Wrestling is so weird. There are a lot of things you need to set yourself apart. I'm not the guy who's the biggest, or the guy with six-pack abs, but in the mainstream you need a unique appearance. Especially for kids. I didn't think about that when I started growing it, but now WWE is selling fake beards, and I see kids wearing them all the time. It's borderline calgary going solo travel costa rica cartoonish, but they get to be like me, and they love that.
We're on the road 250 days a year. Last year I ended up doing 219 shows. We don't have an offseason, so week in and week out, we fly out on Friday, we'll do a show Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday night, all of which are untelevised unless we're doing a pay-per-view on a Sunday. Then we do a live Raw on Monday, we film SmackDown and Main Event on Tuesday, and then we fly home on Wednesday. So we have half of Wednesday and Thursday to get our stuff repacked, calgary going solo travel costa rica and then we fly back out on Friday. And that's when we don't have international tours. If we do, we fly straight out from SmackDown and do an international trip. It's pretty grueling. calgary going solo travel costa rica But I've gotten to see parts of the world I never would have seen. We did two shows in Russia, and I got to stay right across the street from the Kremlin and visit the Red Square. Those are things calgary going solo travel costa rica my dad has never gotten to do. Last April, me and my fianc e, Brie Bella, we got to go to Paris and see the Eiffel Tower as it was closing. I mean, tons of people go to Paris, but we get to go everywhere. The schedule can be taxing, especially for someone like me who's anti-caffeine. Sustaining your energy can be tough, but the thrills that come with the lifestyle pump you more than any sort of artificial energy ever could.
You know what the best part is? After you've had a really calgary going solo travel costa rica good match and the crowd was on their feet the whole time and you finish and you go back and take a shower and you feel completely satisfied. That, to me, is the best part of pro wrestling. calgary going solo travel costa rica When you've just finished doing what you love to do and you did it really well.
The Masked Man ( @AKATheMaskedMan ) is David Shoemaker, author of the new book The Squared calgary going solo travel costa rica Circle: Life, Death, and Pro Wrestling . Previously calgary going solo travel costa rica from The Masked Man: Why Randy Orton is now the champion we need WWE got crazy on the eve of the 'TLC' pay-per-view, and it was glorious Can indie wrestling survive in WWE? WWE 'Survivor Series' Mailbag Wrestling As Art: An Interview calgary going solo travel costa rica With Comic Creator Box Brown
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