Daniel Bryan states that although he and The Miz do not like one another and their wives are not fond of each other either, he still respects The Miz's work ethic.
The feud between The Miz and Daniel Bryan dates back to 2010 when The Miz was the on-screen "mentor" to a Daniel Bryan who was experienced but new to the WWE way of doing things. The two would go on to trade championships in the coming years and traded jabs over social media with one another as well. While Daniel Bryan was the GM of SmackDown Live following having to retire from in-ring competition in 2016 he co-hosted a post-'SmackDown Live' show entitled 'Talking Smack'. During the August 23rd edition of 'Talking Smack' in 2016, the then-WWE Intercontinental Champion The Miz unleashed a verbal tirade directed at Daniel Bryan which has been documented to be legit and unscripted words from The Miz that derived from him being frustrated with not being featured on WWE TV despite holding a top championship.
Fast forwarding two years later and Daniel Bryan has been cleared to return to in-ring competition and as a part of the 2018 WWE 'Superstar Shake-Up' The Miz was moved to the same brand as Daniel Bryan. Their rivalry has not picked up steam on WWE TV just yet but they have had their exchange of words on social media and during a recent interview with Inside The Ropes Daniel Bryan shared his true thoughts about The Miz and went into detail when explaining why he respects "The A-Lister" despite the two not being fond of one another.
“So I don’t think it was ever a question of The Miz stepping up. So one of things… Miz and I dislike each other, right. On a personal level, like we don’t like each other, our wives don’t like each other right." He said. "Its this thing, but I do respect him, because he works very hard. He’s also one of the best talkers in WWE as far as like; if you… there has never been an opportunity where they’ve given Miz a microphone and all that kind of stuff where he hasn’t gotten reactions from it because he’s very good at it. He’s like that… if you think of, okay, what does somebody need to be a WWE superstar? Some people need to be well-rounded, everybody’s different, but if you’re really great at one specific thing, you can do really well here you know, and that's one of the very specific things he’s better at than just about anybody else, and so, one of things that I wanted in that was to fire him up because he was already fired up." Bryan continued, "If you talked to him about it he’s like, ‘I hadn’t been on TV, I’ve got this Intercontinental Title match at the pay-per-view and they’re not plugging it, they’re not doing anything with it I’m frustrated, I’m frustrated with all of this,' right, and that came out in the Talking Smack thing that we did and so, I kind of knew after that, that its like, because I legitimately wanted to punch him in the face, which is why I walked off. Its like okay, ‘I’m either gonna punch this guy in the face or I gotta leave’, and, so I leave, and, I thought afterwards I was like man. I actually was like, ‘This is good, this might make them clear me, because people are gonna want to see this.’ That's what I thought, and then WrestleMania comes and goes and its like nothing happens then you know, so whatever. But yeah, I think that's one of the things I'm really looking forward to, coming up and being able to punch Miz in the face."
If you are going to use the quote above, please credit 'Inside The Ropes' with an H/T to Fightful.com for the transcription.
