Daniel Bryan Is Excited About Being in WWE 2K19’s Showcase Mode, Says Miz Would Be Good For Future Iteration

– Daniel Bryan spoke with IGN for a new interview discussing being in the Showcase Mode for WWE 2K19. Highlights are below:

On appearing in the Showcase Mode for WWE 2K19: “This is amazing because this touches a different audience. It’s a newer audience. I’m fascinated by how people become wrestling fans. And I’ve been introduced to a lot of different ways that people become wrestling fans. I was introduced to wrestling through magazines from a friend. My parents weren’t wrestling fans so I didn’t grow up watching it. I had a friend in first grade who came over to the house, who had a backpack of wrestling magazines, and he showed them to me and as someone who was fascinated with reading at a young age I found myself entranced with these pictures of these wild men. But now we have people who start playing the video game while not being wrestling fans. And then because they play this game, they become interested in the characters and start watching wrestling. We also have people who watch Total Bellas or Total Divas who have no interest in watching wrestling, and then they get interested in these characters and want to start watching wrestling. I’m very grateful for this Showcase because I think this will introduce my story to not only newer wrestling fans who will get the game because they’re wrestling fans, but also people who aren’t wrestling fans but will get the game because they just like wrestling video games. They’ll be able to play through this and think ‘Wait, this guy wrestled John Cena in 2003…and then it doesn’t show him again until 2010. What was he doing for seven years?’ So I think that’s pretty cool.”

On setting new goals for himself: “Yes, but they’re creative goals. So they’re not along the lines of ‘Okay, time to main event WrestleMania 35!’ It’s not stuff like that. Creating goals like that are very difficult in WWE and can often leave you disappointed because you don’t have control over a lot of things. The one thing I do have control over is my performance. And so I have artistic goals I’m trying to reach and places I’d like to go with my wrestling and my character. And even that sometimes is going up against the creative machine and what they want for you vs. what you want for yourself. That’s a constant whirlwind and back-and-forth trade off and whatnot. So I do have those types of goals but they’re not main eventing WrestleMania or winning the Rumble or things you don’t have any say in.”

OnThe Miz being a good candidate for a Showcase Mode in a future iteration: “So, as much as I dislike him, I think he would have a very interesting Showcase Mode. Especially coming from The Real World. This is a reality TV star who started on The Real World talking about pro-wrestling. And then he actually trained himself, he went to a school in Southern California, and then when WWE saw he was serious about it all they scooped him up. But he was not respected a lot in the locker room at first. When you talk to him he’ll tell you that he had to change outside of the locker room because they’d kicked him out. Part of it has to do with his personality, which is part of the reason I want to punch him in the face, but he has a very unique story as to how he got to where he is. He’s had a lot of ups and downs, even from the time when he was accepted in the locker room. He main-evented WrestleMania and since then has had these tremendous up and down swings and those are interesting things to look at when conceiving a Showcase Mode.”