– Sports Illustrated recently interviewed former WWE World champion Daniel Bryan. Below are some highlights.

Bryan on how Kofi Kingston was content to wait 11 years to win a WWE Championship: “The amount of time I spent on the independent scene before coming to WWE dwarfs the amount of time he spent on the independent scene. Kofi talked about, in a negative connotation, that I don’t know what he’s been through because it took him 11 years in WWE to get a WWE Championship match while I won my first WWE Championship two years after being on TV. The difference is I spent the 10 years before that wrestling at high school gyms, wrestling in flea markets, sometimes wrestling in front of seven people, sometimes wrestling in front of thousands of people. That’s how I built up my experience. A difference between Kofi and me is that Kofi has been content for 11 years to sit there and then wait to be given opportunities. From the second I came into WWE, my mission statement was, ‘I am here to main-event WrestleMania, I am here to become WWE Champion, and I am here to be the best.’ You never heard Kofi Kingston say that.”

Bryan on the WWE tag team division: “The WWE tag team division is the best that it’s ever been as far as the matches. The matches between the New Day and the Usos, The Bar, The Revival, they’re all fantastic. But there’s all this big hullabaloo about the women main-eventing WrestleMania. How come no one is talking about tag teams main-eventing WrestleMania? It’s because Kofi Kingston has become tag team champion with so many different partners that people see him as one of the leaders of the tag team division. Especially his work in the New Day, being a five-time champion, people in the tag division have looked up to Kofi. But because Kofi is not someone who knocked down the door and said, ‘Hey, we as the tag team division are putting on the most exciting matches, we’re going out there and doing incredible promo work and incredible segments, we should be in the main event of at least one pay-per-view, we should be in the main event of the SmackDown TV show, we should be aiming to main-event WrestleMania. That’s my goal.’ But none of them say that because they’ve followed Kofi’s lead. So people just sit here and wait to be handed main-event opportunities. That is not how the WWE works.”

Daniel Bryan on his time in the indies: “There are so many people who do mock it, and they do so in a sense like, ‘Oh, he wrestled in bingo halls and flea markets.’ You know what? I loved it. That’s the thing that they will never understand. That’s the drive that got me to where I am. When they told me I’d never wrestle again, I worked for three years to come back. I love this.”