When you think of Daniel Bryan, WrestleMania 30 isn’t far behind.
The ending image of Bryan holding both world titles over his head, the climax of a truly improbable journey will stay with fans forever.
In fact, that final image and main event victory over Batista and Randy Orton is so powerful that the opener he had with Triple H on that same night is often understated.
Objectively, it’s one of the all-time great WrestleMania openers, certainly inside the top five for this writer’s money.
When talkSPORT had the chance to talk to Daniel Bryan, he opened up on how proud he was of his match with Triple H and who the genius behind it was.
“I’m really proud of that. It’s interesting because when I envision myself wrestling someone like Triple H, what I want is a mix of styles. I don’t want it to be a Triple H match and I don’t want it to be a Daniel Bryan match.
“I want us to both bring the best parts of each of us and bring it to the table and I think that’s what we actually got.
“You get the things that Hunter is great at like all the attention to detail. He’s vicious and all these kind of things. He also gave me a Tiger Suplex that I don’t know he’s ever done before! [laughs].
“And then some of the new-generation type stuff, different sorts of action and that sort of thing. I was really, really proud of that one.
“What’s interesting when I think of WrestleMania 30 is that I was going through a ton of neck pain. I had to have surgery a little over a month after WrestleMania and so I would be remiss if I didn’t thank Jamie Noble who was our producer for that.
“He and I have been friends for years and all that kind of stuff, but he’s my go-to guy. He’s my producer. There was a period of time where I was having all this shooting pain down my arm and it was just a real struggle.
“I was doing media all the time and all these different segments backstage. Without Jamie there helping me to make sure my stuff looks good… he knows everything that I do. And he knows everything I don’t do that I can do.
“And he’s like ‘hey, how about this? What about this? What about this?’ It’s been such a blessing having him.
“I don’t want to say he’s ‘my’ producer - he produces a lot of my stuff - but he was the producer for the WrestleMania match with Triple H and without him, there’s a lot of moments that I wouldn’t have had that are cool.”
Bryan had to beat Triple H to get into the main event against Batista and Orton and he did just that in a barn-burning opener.
It’s not the first time the praises of Jamie Noble have been sung, either. Seth Rollins has also told talkSPORT he uses Noble as his producer.
SmackDown airs live every Friday night on BT Sport. WrestleMania streams live on Saturday April 10 and Sunday April 11 on the WWE Network
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