Yes: My Improbable Journey to the Main Event of WrestleMania (Autobiography) (2015)

Written by Daniel Bryan (Bryan Danielson) and Craig Tello
Grade: B+

Despite already being a wrestling legend before he stepped into the WWE, William Regal tells Daniel Bryan once he’s signed, “Your wrestling career is what you did before this. Anything after is just a bonus”.

What a great way to explain Vince McMahon’s WWE. It truly is a miracle that Bryan was able to become the star he did.

Summary

WWE superstar Daniel Bryan prepares for the biggest week of his life. It’s Tuesday morning, April 1st, 2014. WrestleMania XXX is on Sunday, and he’s going to face Triple H in the opening match and later Randy Orton and Batista in the main event for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. This may not seem like a big deal for non-wrestling fans, but wrestling fans are very aware of the true underdog that Daniel Bryan was in the WWE. Looking at him, you would think he would just be some regular midcard act on the biggest show of the year, but he beat the odds to become the most popular star in the company. With his long hair, shaggy beard, and shorter stature, Bryan isn’t the most traditional wrestling star, but it’s part of his endearing quality and what makes him who he is in the land of giants. He shows up for the morning’s press event in New York to start the festivities for WrestleMania week. His signature “Yes!” chants are heard as soon as he exits his car from nearby fans and into the event. His Road to WrestleMania has begun. Privately, he will be married to his fiancée and fellow professional wrestler Brie Bella in eleven days as well. So, at the same time that he will reach the highest point of his professional career, he will reach the same in his personal life all in a week or so.

The way the book is structured is different. At the beginning of each chapter, we go to the current Daniel Bryan preparing during WrestleMania week like in the introductory paragraph. Then, we go to the main story at hand, which is telling the real Bryan Danielson’s story. This goes from birth to when he got into wrestling, to the this very point in 2014. It goes back and forth like this for a majority of the book. Eventually, the two narratives will intersect at the end.

To open the real story from Bryan Danielson’s perspective, Bryan explains that WWE recently asked many of their successful superstars to take a “personality inventory”, a test assessing personal qualities such as sociability, prudence, and interpersonal sensitivity. The idea behind these tests is that “different professions require different personal characteristics”, but it’s never been tested on wrestlers. If the WWE could find out the personality traits of their most successful superstars, Bryan being one of them, it would give them more information about the likelihood of a new signee being successful. It’s a true and false test. Bryan’s test results revealed that in all the primary markers except one (“learning approach”, where he scored in the 84th percentile), he scored very low. His score in the “ambition” category was the lowest the test administrator had ever seen in the history of administering this kind of test and data. He was in the bottom one percentile. She asked Bryan how he managed to be so successful given that he has “no drive, few social skills, and an inherent apathy towards most of the ideas our modern business culture seems to find so important”. Bryan didn’t know. All he did know was that he loved to wrestle. By his own admission, he says the success has come mostly by luck.

From the beginning, he wonders if his lack of ambition is rooted from birth since he was in the womb for over ten months. Next, we get some insight on his family like his mother Betty, his father Buddy Danielson, his protective and social older sister Billie Sue, and how Bryan himself was never overly social as a kid, though he was happy. In addition, he developed an early stutter when he was younger that he wasn’t able to get over until he was 12. In Chapter Two, we jump back to the aforementioned press event on Tuesday of WrestleMania week in New York. To further the difference between him and stars of years past, he’s on stage at the press conference with the likes of Hulk Hogan, John Cena, Batista, and Triple H. Privately, Bryan feels the pressure of having to speak in front of everyone. It makes him more nervous to speak to 50 members of the press than it does wrestling in front of 70,000 people. The latter doesn’t bother him at all because he loves it so much. Even so, when he goes to speak, you don’t notice his personal feelings of anxiety, as he talks about “dreams” and how the fans got him to where he is. Admitting his SummerSlam press event speech was a failure, he’s happy to note he’s improved at the public speaking aspect of his job. Next stop is New Orleans for WrestleMania. He heads out with Brie and onto the plane with the rest of the WWE locker room.

Going back to his earlier life, Daniel Bryan, or the real-life Bryan Danielson, talks about how six months before he started his professional wrestling career, he was a senior sitting in an English class getting ready to read his essay aloud. Going back to his fears of public speaking and awkwardness in social situations, he mentions again about the difference between himself and his outgoing sister Billie Sue. When it came to Bryan’s wedding, he had told her to make a speech three minutes beforehand in front of the entire wedding and the crew filming for E!’s Total Divas reality show. Despite the pressure he accidentally put his sister under, she managed to pull it off with ease, which is something he could never do because of how different his personality is from hers. Going back to the English class, he talks about how he stuttered through his essay in front of the class to the point where he just gave up and stopped because of the sheer embarrassment and anxiety taking over. He was the only one who couldn’t finish the reading of his essay. He felt a similar feeling years later when he was amongst the first class of “Rookies” on WWE NXT. Though he was wrestling for ten years up until this point, he was considered a “rookie” for the sake of the show. Right before the beginning of the show, they weren’t told any details. All they were told beforehand by a producer was that one of the WWE Pros were going to come on set and speak, and they were to react accordingly. The Pro speaking was The Miz, who was Daniel Bryan’s assigned Pro. After referring to Bryan as an “internet darling” and “a star in the minor leagues”, Miz asked Bryan if he thought he was ready for the WWE.

Uttering the word that would define him, he simply stated, “Yes”.

As Miz prepares Bryan to speak on the mic, a skill very important in professional wrestling, Bryan admits to us readers he was always known up until that point as a skilled wrestler, but he did gain a reputation as not having much charisma or verbal ability. Though larger-than-life characters are very important to the wrestling industry, Bryan got by previously on being himself. If he had to talk, he would try to prepare immensely beforehand. However, The Miz was putting him on the spot on live TV and he was forced to cut a promo without anything to go off of. He tried his best but lost track of things quickly until The Miz interrupted to get the segment back on track by insulting him. After a little back-and-forth, the segment ended with Miz slapping Bryan, which Bryan didn’t know was going to happen beforehand. Though Daniel Bryan’s time on NXT seems to be a blip on the radar considering his larger body of work, he admits it was one of the most unusual wrestling experiences of his career because such a big part of it was unscripted. Regarding this scenario, he didn’t know Miz was going to come out and save the promo or slap him. Later in that inaugural episode, Bryan faced World Heavyweight Champion Chris Jericho in the main event, and Jericho helped make him look great in a loss. After the match, Miz came and beat down Bryan. He didn’t know it was going to happen and neither did Miz, who was told by the referee in the ring by the producers to proceed with said beatdown. All in all, it was a decent debut on WWE television. However, Bryan notes that it all went “downhill from there”.

In Chapter Three, Bryan arrives in New Orleans on Tuesday night. Soon after arriving in the city, Bryan and Brie split to do different things. Brie goes to make an appearance somewhere, and Bryan heads to Whole Foods. This is a regular occurrence for Bryan who usually heads to the nearest organic market upon travelling to a city for a WWE event to stock up for several days of travel. He stresses having nutrient-dense food, and he does most of the shopping for him and Brie since Brie’s show Total Divas has made her even busier than before. Bryan was very famously a vegan but after developing an intolerance to soy, he had to abandon the practice. Even so, him and Brie are good about eating organic and as healthy as possible. Quietly, he goes back to his hotel room for the night after getting his groceries. Next, Bryan gets the reigns of the story again and talks about how wrestling captured his imagination at an early age. His childhood friend Abe showed Bryan and their other friend Warren about some wrestling magazines he managed to get his hands on. Warren lost interest quickly, but Bryan became enthralled with these crazy characters that encompassed the wrestling world. After convincing Abe to let him borrow some, he became hooked. His parents encouraged it because they saw Bryan reading and how happy he was doing it. Following this, his parents would start buying him his own and he became a better reader as a result, which was important because he missed a lot of school. He relays this to one of his many personal hypotheses. One he believes is that due to modern medicine, humans have stopped evolving in a way that produces healthier adults. His argument is that because many children who two hundred years ago would have died are now living to successfully reproduce. As a result, they pass on their genetic deficiencies to their children, who then pass them on to their children, and so on and so forth.

He considers himself to be one of these children. He was sick his entire childhood and often sick as an adult. Without modern medicine, he argues that he would have passed way before he could procreate. Early when they were dating, he told fellow defect Brie that it would be “genetically irresponsible” for them to have children as it would “weaken the evolution of humans going forward”. Obviously, he has softened his stance as they became closer in their relationship, but it’s just a little insight on how the WWE superstar thinks.

Moving on, he talks about his asthma, his allergies to grass, trees, and almost all animal hair, and how he used to get weekly injections to curtail this (up to 150 shots). This affected him deeply as he got a few upper respiratory infections and he had to miss a lot of school as a result. Because of this, he became less social and was fine with just entertaining himself and developing his own interests. He played sports, but he wasn’t good at any of them because he says he never had the mentality necessary to play sports. To him, they were just games, and it was hard for him to care about winning or losing. If there was no pressure, that’s when he had fun. This is why he liked practice. He saw it like he was playing against his friends and because it was fun for him to see “functional improvement”. He collected sports cards and thought they were going to be worth a lot of money someday, but the problem here was that he liked the guys who weren’t considered “stars” or the underappreciated athletes of each sport. This isn’t going to get you a lot of money if you were to sell them, which he found out when trying to sell the cards with his friend Scott. Following this debacle, he continued his money-making endeavors. Following his parents’ divorce, Bryan’s mom was having a hard time finding a job without a degree, so Bryan and Billie Sue took on paper routes. It came relatively easy for Bryan but when it came to collect payments from the people who got the paper, he shied away because of the confrontations you have to involve yourself in for someone who would miss a payment and would owe a lot at one time. It got to the point where he would avoid some houses altogether and Bryan himself had owed more than he collected.

Eventually, Billie Sue got a job at McDonald’s and got him a job there too. They moved him quickly to fry cook despite being underage, and he worked more hours than he should have been allowed, mostly because he picked it up pretty quickly. During this timeframe, he found professional wrestling on television and was excited to see his magazines come to life. Becoming enthralled by stars such as The Ultimate Warrior or “Macho Man” Randy Savage, he would tune in every Saturday morning to watch. At one point, he remembers arguing with his dad because Buddy wanted to watch the Seattle Seahawks against the Cincinatti Bengals in a playoff game and Bryan wanted to watch wrestling, despite it being on every week. Bryan and his friend Abe were the only ones who were wrestling fans at the time, but Abe grew out of it too. It wasn’t until middle school that Bryan found other kids who were also wrestling fans. His group of friends created their own faux wrestling league where they would fight a giant teddy bear, and they invited Bryan and his friend Evan over to play with them. It became a regular thing and would continue into their high school years. Eventually, the teddy bear left and they would wrestle more, and they would go to Bryan’s house for wrestling pay-per-views. The first show he ordered was the Royal Rumble in 1996. The next was the famous WrestleMania XII, where Bret Hart faced Shawn Michaels for the WWF Championship in a 60-minute Iron Man Match. During this timeframe, they would still wrestle each other in the house and would pretend the room they were in was a wrestling ring, complete with a mattress in the center of the room. Of course, this would yield disastrous results. With Bryan taking it a little more seriously and practicing moves like backflips off the couch or doing a twisting senton, the latter attempt would result in Bryan falling on his friend Kristof, breaking his friend’s jaw.

Despite this particular incident, Bryan didn’t tell his mom what happened because they had already been given a warning after cracking the drywall in the corner they used as a turnbuckle. If they got in trouble, there’s a good chance they wouldn’t be allowed to wrestle again. She didn’t find out until much later when she was conversing with Kristof’s mom, who was much cooler about it. Regardless of all this, he’s still friends with all those guys, as they were in his wedding. This includes Kristof. Later, Bryan talks about how since he was perfectly content with staying at home, he only dated one girl in high school, but it didn’t work out after an incident where they were making out on the couch in her parent’s basement. When she was on top of him, she whispered “Be gentle”, and he laughed so hard that he accidentally threw her off the couch. Then, he talks about his blue-collar hometown of Aberdeen, Washington. They’re big in the timber industry, they had the highest tavern-per-person ratio in the state, it rains over 80 inches per year, and it has a high number of suicides every year. Ironically, this is where Kurt Cobain is from, which he points out. After he talks about his love of nature but hatred of fishing because he imagines himself in the position of the fish, he goes a little more in-depth about his father Buddy. Everyone agrees he was a great man. His only problem was alcohol, which is what ended his marriage to Bryan’s mother. He would check in and out of alcohol programs but would always end up starting again. His mother hid it from them, but they could hear the arguing from a different room on plenty of occasions. It only got worse when Buddy’s parents died a year apart from each other. This would lead to Bryan’s parents divorcing. Even with all of this, he sees his dad in a positive light.

It’s just a reminder as to why he doesn’t drink and never will.

Bryan talks about Christmas time with his dad, clam digging with him, Buddy remarrying and how he has a great relationship with Buddy’s wife as well, and how his mother struggled after the divorce. She didn’t have much of an education, but she had to support Bryan and his sister. Showing her strength, she worked every odd job imaginable, while balancing being a mother and taking community college classes to get her degree. Eventually, she got a master’s in counseling psychology and would remarry as well. In Chapter Four, it’s Wednesday of WrestleMania week. To start off the morning, Daniel Bryan heads out to the gym to work on his conditioning and technique. He also talks about the revolution of wrestling and the importance of being more agile and mobile compared to the older eras of wrestling. We then go back to the regular story at hand of Bryan’s early life. This is when the story of Yes starts to take shape. In Chapter Four following this aside in the gym, he talks about how as early as he can remember, he always wanted to be a wrestler. No matter who asked and no matter how old he got, he always wanted to be a wrestler. He just didn’t know how to crack into the business. This led him to an edition of Pro Wrestling Illustrated. They had advertisements that read “Learn how to be a professional wrestler!”. You would pay $20, and they would give you a guidebook that was more of a “phone book of resources”. It would say basic things like how he would need to get gear and boots, but the most important thing was to find a wrestling school to train at.

One of the books he got highlighted Dean Malenko’s Malenko School of Wrestling, who was coincidentally Bryan’s favorite wrestler. Though the colorful characters are what drew Bryan to wrestling when he was a kid, his tastes changed when he got older and he started to appreciate in-ring technicians like Bret Hart, Arn Anderson, and Malenko. So, by the time he was a sophomore in high school, he knew where he wanted to go. His future career started to seem possible because smaller wrestlers in WCW started to get showcased during this timeframe, which boded well for the smaller Bryan. Guys like Malenko, Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, and Rey Mysterio started to revolutionize the game with the Cruiserweight Division. Malenko’s match against Mysterio at The Great American Bash n 1996 was one match in particular he mentions as important. Shortly after turning 16, he called to inquire about the Malenko School of Wrestling, using the number he found in one of his books. It was $2,500 to enroll but a $500 deposit was required to secure your spot. Working diligently at McDonald’s and KB Toys all summer, he worked to get just enough money to secure his spot. It was all about wrestling from this point and working towards that goal in any way shape or form. He would prepare by reading books on strength training to strengthen his neck because he felt that he would have to be a highflyer and may have to pull off some backflips. With this in mind, he bought Japanese and Mexican wrestling tapes through an internet catalgoue.

Since he was working so much to get as much money as possible, he lied to his school and said he got a job as a logger, and it was paying more than any of his other jobs. Unfortunately, they needed him to work during the day. He asked if he could do all of his work at home and just come to school to take the tests, and they agreed. He then forged a letter from his mother and his fake boss to give to the school. Sadly, three months before he graduated and was planning on heading to Florida, he got a call to inform him that the Malenko School of Wrestling had closed down. They didn’t have his deposit anymore either, and he just had to deal with it. It’s a cold world. He didn’t know what to do this close to graduation. He called other wrestling schools but wasn’t confident in their abilities in teaching him. Thankfully, he got word of Shawn Michaels opening up his own wrestling school and though he had some reservations, this was the start of Bryan Danielson’s professional wrestling career and making his dream a reality. Better yet, this was the beginning of his path to becoming WWE’s Daniel Bryan, a wrestling legend.

My Thoughts:

In professional wrestling, no wrestler has truly defined the role of the “underdog” more than Daniel Bryan. Being a shy, smaller man, with not many discernible quirks or qualities isn’t great in an industry centered around big-time characters. Looking at how wrestling has been since the beginning, someone like Bryan shouldn’t have made it. The odds were very much against him. Even so, the real-life Bryan Danielson wanted to be a wrestler at all costs and his journey to becoming one is a tale worth telling. Wrestling fans will enjoy getting into the mind of the likable “everyman” Bryan is, as Yes: My Improbable Journey to the Main Event of WrestleMania is an enjoyable and easy read for followers of sports entertainment.

Because of how WWE documents everything and likes to cover its top stars relentlessly, we are very aware of his time in wrestling’s premier company. Additionally, everything regarding his tenure in WWE is still in recent memory too, so as entertaining as this part of the book was, it may have been the least interesting part in totality. Maybe it’s because I’m well-researched on the subject at hand. For those who don’t know the details of Bryan’s WWE tenure or don’t have much of a detailed memory as I tend to do regarding professional wrestling, this part may be appreciated just as much. However, in my case, it didn’t interest me nearly as much as his early career, how he got started in the business, and his days on the independent scene. This was the brunt of the book, and I loved how in-depth he goes with his memories and dealings with Shawn Michaels’s wrestling school, smaller independent promotions, FMW, APW, NJPW, ROH, and his countless trips to Europe and Japan. Not only did we get a better idea as to why he became such a great in-ring wrestler because of his dedication to the craft and learning from some great teachers with each tour he would take, but it was just as inspiring learning about how much he would sacrifice to achieve his ultimate goal. If anything, this is the biggest positive coming out of Yes. The trials and tribulations he faced throughout his career and overcoming it all is actually inspiring. Whether it be dealing with rough living situations, serious injuries, or lack of help, Bryan has been through it all and found a way to succeed. We’ve seen it in wrestling storylines and they’re usually well-done, but Bryan Danielson’s real life is very much akin to the underdog character he plays.

It’s inspiring for those wanting to break into the business, while showing us what it takes to be the best, but it’s also a great tale for anyone in need of a kick in the ass to understand how much sacrifice it may take in certain professions to succeed.

So, non-wrestling fans may find some value in this book just as well.

What makes this autobiography special is the insight into the mind of Daniel Bryan and the stuff that isn’t touched on as much regarding his life because he’s such a captivating guy. One example I found particularly intriguing was that he didn’t know how to motivate others. At length, he would talk about his two different stints as a trainer and his failure both times. Despite regularly being considered by many as one of the greatest in-ring performers the wrestling industry has ever seen, he couldn’t figure out either time how to teach or inspire others. He can do the basics, but he figured it out because he was self-motivated. He never needed to instill passion in others. Bryan always had the passion for wrestling, so when others wouldn’t approach his teachings with the same manner, he never figured out how to work with it. In fact, he had no interest in doing it. Bryan always felt that if you wanted to wrestle, you would just do it like him or come with the fire of wanting to learn. It really shows how different his love is for wrestling compared to others in the industry. It also shows you why he’s achieved the success he has. Without a personal drive as strong as his, he would have never reached the heights he did. Then again, it’s not ambition, as the test he took showed. It was all about love and doing what he wanted to do at all costs. Furthermore, his frugal way of living was another important note. Now, it’s understandable that one would be cheap in his situation when he first started out because it’s tough living on your own for the first time, but in instances like when he decided to live at the Inoki Dojo in Santa Monica just to save money but also prove his dedication, it shows you how far he was willing to go to be all-in. Danielson also made a great point in that “If you don’t require very much money to live, it gives you a certain amount of freedom and that freedom allowed me to commit a hundred percent of myself to wrestling”.

Many times throughout this book, he proves this quote to be very true. It makes you want to get up, move, and carve your own career path. I say this with the utmost respect, but Yes instills a confidence in you that is very much “If he can do it, so can I!”.

I knew about his training with Shawn Michaels, but it was fun learning about his friendship with Brian Kendrick, and the both of them getting trained by Rudy Boy Gonzalez. Shawn going to bat for him on numerous occasions was also a cool note, which included Shawn threatening to take Bryan, Kendrick, and Lance Cade to WCW at one point just to get them signed to developmental contracts. Obviously, the best part about reading an autobiography is learning what you didn’t know. It’s even more fun for wrestling fans because the proverbial pulling of the curtain is something we always try to do to learn more about the innerworkings of wrestlers and the fun world they occupy. This is why Shawn Michaels coming up with Bryan’s famous nickname of “The American Dragon” (“because you wrestle like a Japanese guy”) and Bryan hating it but liking Shawn’s comment, Bryan winning the King of the Indies Tournament in APW because of a comment by Nick Bockwinkel, which pissed off the one who was supposed to win in Donovan Morgan, legitimately pissing off Takeshi Morishima to get him to wrestle more aggressively in a title match resulting in a real orbital injury, almost heading up Evolve with Gabe Sapolsky and Paul Heyman, and living with Shinsuke Nakamura at one point (years before his fame) are just a taste of the stories you’ve surely never knew about the multiple time world champion. Then, you get funny asides like how he used to live with former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Lyoto Machida. This is where we get arguably the funniest comment of the book where he states, “There have been rumors that he drank his own pee, but I never saw it”.

I loved the small section dedicated to his beard. You can’t help but laugh with how quickly he shaved when the big woman in London told him, “Your beard, it looks like me minge”.

In true Bryan Danielson fashion, Yes is a very honest book. One of the reasons Bryan has become popular everywhere he’s gone is because of his authenticity, and this only translates when talking about his friendship with Kane, his love for Brie Bella and some fun stories about their relationship (their first kiss was magical to say the least), and in private conversations with Vince McMahon. Upon meeting McMahon for the first time, he doesn’t waiver in who he is at all. Though he’s looking for a job, he doesn’t boast that he’s the “Best Wrestler in the World” like how he would in a promo, despite Vince usually loving this type of confidence. When they talk about him potentially signing with the WWE, he straight-up tells Vince that the company doesn’t have the best track record regarding smaller wrestlers. No one would say something like this in an interview with the biggest company in wrestling, but Bryan was never about the money. He’s going to be real with everyone he comes into contact with. Later, when he gets fired the first time for violating the PG presentation of the show at the time during the Nexus angle (“no choking, no spitting”), Vince calls him personally and admits he’s sorry he has to let him go. In the most Bryan Danielson way of responding, Bryan tells him it’s no big deal because he’ll make a lot of money on the indies with the way things played out as if to say, “I’ll be fine! Thank you for this!”. Even when he was “eliminated” on NXT, he mentioned his real-life name in the promo and acknowledged his career on the independents, which is something you NEVER do in the WWE, especially during this timeframe. Despite this, his authenticity won everyone over including the fans, the notoriously hard to understand Vince McMahon, and us the readers.

You really get a newfound appreciation for Bryan Danielson the person.

Also touched on is his venture into becoming a bad vegetarian, becoming a good vegan but having to give up on it due to developing a soy intolerance (and drinking 4 to 5 protein shakes a day can get tiring), the respect and admiration he has for his mentor William Regal, learning the European style of wrestling, and how he learned to entertain in the Butlins, getting deported from London, the importance of losing to Low Ki in the Super 8 Tournament, his wars with Nigel McGuiness in ROH, his realization of where he needs to take his character while working with Roderick Strong, working through injuries because of his passion and how he feels alive when in the ring, refusing to tone down his style despite the Chris Benoit tragedy, getting the chance to be “The guy” in ROH once CM Punk went to WWE and Samoa Joe went to TNA, and how close he was to going back to school in 2009 sometime after Adam Pearce took over booking in ROH. Additionally, there’s a lot of fun in the WWE part of the book too like how unpredictable NXT was back then, and the promo school section with Vince McMahon himself. It really shows the difference between professional wrestling and the importance of character acting in the world of WWE and sports entertainment. The stuff with Kane was funny as hell too like how they started to bond over a crazy book by Mantak Chia and how Kane was fixated on the ridiculous theory of exposing your taint to the sun and its sexual health benefits. As a wrestling fan, I would’ve loved to have been a fly on the wall listening to those two talk on a daily basis. Just Bryan’s quote to finish off this section of the book had me dying laughing saying, “We even had a good time doing early morning media where I’d make outlandish claims about him being a Communist while he would tell everyone about my desire to have a composting toilet”.

They must have drove the front office nuts.

I’m happy the book is just as honest as Bryan is because as we know with the WWE, they tend to censor a lot of things or make sure their talent doesn’t bring up certain topics or people. I didn’t get the sense of any kind of censorship, which is great. If Bryan didn’t get too deep on a topic or is polite about something he could delve deeper into, I chalked it up to how he is as a person rather than him being told he can’t say something. With this being said, it did feel like Craig Tello did a lot more of the writing and cleaning up of what was Bryan Danielson’s telling of his personal story. I know this is the case for most autobiographies, but some of the language and vocabulary felt too unnatural at times, especially because we know how Bryan actually talks in the many documentaries and real-life interviews we’ve seen. Because of this, the writing definitely doesn’t match the personable way Bryan speaks. Also, the back-and-forth way of telling the story in general, between WrestleMania week in 2014 and Bryan’s life story, didn’t have the “calm before the storm” vibe it was going for. Everything involving the WrestleMania week stuff was uneventful and at times, boring. It worked for the introduction, but it felt like a waste of time as you get deeper with each chapter. I guess they made up for it with that one story in Santa Monica when some random guy asked if he could pay Bryan to let him suck his cock and Bryan politely declining.

Such as life.

Yes: My Improbable Journey to the Main Event of WrestleMania is a great read for wrestling fans, a must-read for superfans of Bryan Danielson, and a decent read for someone looking for their own personal passion in life. Again, it’s a motivating book whether Bryan intended on it being or not. I do have mixed feelings about the ending though. Though it was emotional to hear about Bryan’s father passing, him admitting his journey wasn’t worth it because everything he missed out on didn’t fit the theme of the book or anything preceding it. It was a very abrupt ending and felt strange. In his defense, I can’t blame him. It was probably still fresh in his memory, so it’s hard not to talk about it considering the timing of it all.