It doesn’t sound like “The American Dragon” Bryan Danielson would ever be willing to film reality television again.
All Elite Wrestling‘s Bryan Danielson was the latest guest on The Sessions with Renee Paquette to discuss a wide variety of subjects. When the subject of filming Total Bellas came up, Danielson couldn’t help but explain how much he hated the entire experience.
“Then we had to film Total Bellas… Jesus. Okay, that’s the part I forgot,” Bryan Danielson began. “Okay, so shortly after I have to give this retirement speech. And then I have to go live in John Cena’s house. Because we’re filming Total Bellas, I hate hate hate, hate hate. I don’t hate many things. I hate filming reality television. All of it! You’re constantly changing clothes on the same day to go film something to pretend like it’s a different day. This is supposed to be real. Can’t I just wear my same clothes? And they’re like, ‘No, you cannot.’
“And it was really hard because when you’re going through something like retiring, this thing that you love gets taken away from you. You’d like to be around friends and family. Brie was on the road full time with wrestling. So she was leaving on Friday and not coming back til Wednesday. We’d film Wednesday, Thursday, she leaves on Friday. I’m in John Cena’s guest house, there’s all these rules. I’ve got the dog.
“I love John. I think John’s great, but that’s not the ideal thing to be in, and then they manufacture these arguments. That sometimes turn into real arguments. One of the real arguments got real-real, and then it was like, Oh, Jesus, I don’t want to be here anymore. So I just left.
Danielson went on to explain that he actually got into an argument with Nikki Bella over the size of a house he and Brie wanted to build. He said that it escalated from a conversation about being deserving of things in life, which he said he didn’t agree with.
“My opinion on all of it is that none of us deserve these things that we’ve gotten. For example, I’ve met a lot of fantastic wrestlers along the way who never got to where I was because of luck, good or bad. Good luck on my side. Bad luck on their side. When you look at somebody like Nigel McGuinness, who, in theory, the only reason he wasn’t more successful because he was honest about tearing his bicep, and I lied about concussions and seizures. And that wasn’t a thing that I went into the doctor, and when they’re asking you these questions, it wasn’t like I was thinking like oh, I gotta lie to him about my concussion thing they asked and then my, that part of your brain that just reacts on instinct. They said, Oh, no, I’m good. And his thing was, ‘Well, I gotta tell him about bicep tear,’ or whatever.
“And that’s the difference between me getting to where I got and then him never having to match in WWE, right? So anyways, when we get back to the deserving stuff, somebody deserving a bigger house, when a bigger house is worse for the planet and all that kind of stuff. And Brie and I had talked, and that didn’t even seem to be what she wanted anyways, and then we get into this big thing, and then I just left.
Danielson says he ended up leaving and missed his mother-in-law’s wedding because of the argument. He said he apologized for his role, but noted that it was the closest he’d ever been to saying he wanted to be done with all of it.
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What do you make of Bryan Danielson’s comments? Are you a fan of reality television? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
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