Daniel Bryan may have lost out the WWE Championship to Kofi Kingston during WrestleMania 35, but his family is standing by him every step of the way.
Sunday, after Bryan turned over the champion title to Kingston in a historic win, wife Brie Bella took to Instagram to share a sweet slideshow of herself and the couple’s 1-year-old daughter Birdie hugging the champion of their family.
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“He’s still our champ…..and the planets (sic),” she captioned the photos, referencing Bryan’s eco-friendly platform as the previous WWE Champion.
Prior to taking on Kingston in the ring, Bryan opened up to ESPN about his expectations going into WrestleMania.
“I guarantee I will walk out of WrestleMania 35 as the WWE Champion,” he said at the time, “because I’m fighting for something bigger than Kofi Kingston is fighting for and I fight harder than Kofi Kingston has ever fought for anything else. So Kofi Kingston is great, he’s fantastic in the ring, but when it comes to pushing yourself to the level you need to be to be the WWE Champion, he has never once, not in his entire career, proven that he can do it.
The Total Bellas star continued of the new champ’s merchandise line, which uses environmentally harmful organic cotton, “Kofi Kingston, everyone’s like, ‘Oh we love Kofi Kingston!’ Why? Because he smiles? Do you know how much harm Kofi Kingston has done to the planet, do you know how much harm Kofi Kingston has done to the kids?”
That being said, Bryan had nothing negative to say about Kingston as an athlete, simply that he didn’t appear to want to knock down the same doors he had to get to where he was.
“There’s a lot of good things about Kofi Kingston,” he said. “He’s extremely talented, he’s really athletic, and as far as skill in the ring, he’s one of the best. So Kofi is incredibly talented, amazing in the ring … he’s been waiting outside that door to be invited in to the upper echelon of WWE for 11 years.”
“Nobody’s gonna knock down that door for you if you want to get to the upper echelon of anything,” he concluded. “If you want to be a game changer, a world changer, you have to knock those doors down yourself, and Kofi Kingston doesn’t have the mental aptitude to do it.”
Photo credit: Instagram/Brie Bella
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