Daniel Bryan recently did an interview with the Arizona Diamondbacks after throwing out the first pitch at the team’s final home game of the regular season. Bryan talks about being a Seattle sports fan, his apprehension to batting practice and the stark differences between wrestling in a stadium in comparison to an arena. Below are some quotes from the interview:
Daniel Bryan on his sports fandom:
Baseball before 1995 is my forte. I just met (former D-backs first baseman) Mark Grace and I yelled, “Mark Grace! This is awesome!” I’ll tell all my friends, and they’ll all know who Mark Grace is. We all collected baseball cards and that kind of memorabilia when we were kids, and now even former Seattle Mariner (and Hall of Fame pitcher) Randy Johnson is working in your guys’ front office. I was always a huge Mariners fan, but once you get past 1995 … I vaguely followed the Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa home run race in 1998, but we in the WWE do so many shows every year it’s harder for me to keep up with it all. For example, everybody thinks I’m a diehard Seattle Seahawks fan, which I am. I love the Seahawks, but I never get to watch a game. People ask me about those players, and all I know is Russell Wilson is the quarterback.
I loved Randy Johnson back in the day. I liked Ken Griffey Jr., and I loved when they brought his dad onto the team and they played at the same time in 1990. I thought that was the coolest. I loved Edgar Martinez, just like everybody did. As a DH, he was always hitting over .300. He seemed to get better as he got older.
On not making a fool of himself on the mound or in the batting cage:
I haven’t played baseball since I was 13 years old, and I was not good. So doing BP or throwing out a first pitch are those things where it’s like, “Oh, I don’t want to go out there and make a fool of myself.” I’m trying to hype up the Royal Rumble and imagine me coming out here in front of all these people and they’re like, “Oh, this is the WWE guy. Let’s see how you can throw a pitch,” and it’s like bounce, bounce, bounce …
On wrestling in an arena vs. a stadium:
It’s interesting because as a performer, I think it’s not so much a difference between an outdoor show vs. an indoor one. A much bigger difference is a stadium show as compared to an arena show. Typically when we come to Phoenix, we do our shows inside an arena, an enclosed atmosphere. And when you do a move, you hear the “Yeaaaah” from fans right away. In a big stadium show, sometimes we’ll do a move, hear no response and you’ll think, “Wow, nobody cared.” And then you’re in the middle of doing something else, and then you hear this “Whoaaah.” You kind of want to stop and say, “Wait a second. I didn’t do anything.” Then you realize it takes a second for the sound to travel down to the ring. That’s the weird part. Because what we do is entertainment, a lot of times I’m gauging what I’m doing by how the fans react. So if you can’t hear how the fans reacted for a particular move, even with a couple seconds delay, it just throws off your whole mindset. But it is just so cool to me to be in front of so many people. There’s nothing like the energy of performing in front of so many fans.
You can read the entire interview by going here.
