D.B. talks about the acoustics.
To kick off the road to WrestleMania 35, WWE's annual Royal Rumble PPV will scoop up the fans for the journey. The event will take place on January 27th and is streaming live on the WWE Network from 'Chase Field' in Phoenix, Arizona. 'Chase Field' seats nearly 49,000 people and this event will be the first time that WWE hosts a wrestling event at a baseball stadium since WrestleMania XIX which took place at Safeco Field in Seattle, Washington.
Washington state is the birthplace of Daniel Bryan and Arizona is where the former multi-time WWE World Champion resides so this upcoming January will be a bit of a homecoming for Bryan. Bryan has been doing PR work on behalf of WWE to promote the Royal Rumble and he recently spoke with MLB.com and during the two parties' discussion Bryan talked about how it can be challenging for wrestlers when they perform at an outdoor stadium opposed to an indoor stadium and/or arena.
"It's interesting because as a performer, I think it's not so much a difference between an outdoor show versus an indoor one. A much bigger difference is a stadium show as compared to an arena show. Typically when we come to Phoenix, we do our shows inside an arena, an enclosed atmosphere, and when you do a move, you hear the, 'Yeaaaah' from fans right away." Bryan said. "In a big stadium show, sometimes we'll do a move, hear no response and you'll think, 'Wow, nobody cared', and then you're in the middle of doing something else, and then you hear this 'Whoaaah', you kind of want to stop and say, 'Wait a second, I didn't do anything'. Then you realize it takes a second for the sound to travel down to the ring. That's the weird part. Because what we do is entertainment, a lot of times I'm gauging what I'm doing by how the fans react. So if you can't hear how the fans reacted for a particular move, even with a couple seconds delay, it just throws off your whole mindset. But it is just so cool to me to be in front of so many people. There's nothing like the energy of performing in front of so many fans. I'm also in a very unique situation where a lot of people will chant 'Yes' as soon as I start coming out. So it's a whole arena of people chanting in unison with me. I read a lot, and so I've been reading about fungal networks recently and how they all interact in the plant world. I've started to think when I come out to the ring, there's this unique singular fungal network where wrestling fans and I all chant 'Yes' together. It's weird." Bryan said. "If you were to tell people, 'Okay, everybody do this at the same time,' it'd be hard to get everybody in sync but wrestling fans just naturally do it. So, we all do it together and it's pretty incredible."
Travel packages and tickets for the Royal Rumble PPV are on sale now and there is also an AXXESS show reportedly taking place during that weekend as well. To read the full interview with Daniel Bryan on MLB.com, click here.