Bryan Danielson on Being The Miz’s Rookie in NXT
Yesterday, Bryan Danielson was the latest guest on INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet. Danielson and Van Vliet discussed a number of topics and one of the topics was being The Miz’s rookie on season 1 of NXT.
Below is what Danielson had to say about being The Miz’s rookie in NXT:
“I thought it was great, because what you want in WWE is some sort of story. So this is one of the things that I had a hard time with. When they signed me, I had longer hair and a little bit more of a wilder look. I liked that look, but they said, ‘Okay, you’re gonna do this thing with The Miz. You’re gonna be a rookie.’ So I really without anybody asking me to, and maybe that’s one of the things that I should have said was, ‘Hey, how much are we going to play [into this?]’ The reality was they didn’t put much thought into that show at all. So it was like, looking back on it, it’s like that was their main priority was they’d film SmackDown on Tuesdays. Their main priority was SmackDown, then they just threw NXT together before that. But I thought this is, and it was, a huge opportunity to be on TV. So what I did was cut my hair more to look more generic. I tried to look as generic as possible with the idea, and me and Miz were collaborating on this stuff. Miz was great about pitching ideas to the writers and all that kind of stuff about all these things of, okay, I can’t learn wrestling from Miz, but he’s going to teach me to be a Superstar, and me being frustrated like, ‘That’s not important. The only thing that’s important is the wrestling.’ That kind of thing that people think that I actually think, or that people think he would actually think, this could be a really good TV dynamic, and we both thought that, and then none of it ever happened. So then I just looked like a nerd for no reason. Not to say that I’m not a nerd. I’m just saying that I went out of my way to look less.”
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