10 Things WWE Wants You To Forget About Daniel Bryan

9. He Originally Wanted To Go to Dean Malenko's Wrestling School

What WWE loves to mention is that Bryan was trained by Shawn Michaels. They've used it in storylines especially when Michaels cost Bryan the WWE Title at Hell in a Cell 2013. However, what a lot of people don't know is that Bryan wanted to actually learn how to wrestle from the great Dean Malenko instead. In a 2006 interview with SLAM Wrestling, Bryan talked about his wrestling school path: "It was never my intention to go to Shawn Michaels' school originally. I was planning on going to Dean Malenko's school and had actually sent in my deposit to go there when I was a sophomore in high school. Three months before I graduated I got a call from Phyllis Lee, who was responsible for taking payments for the Malenko school, and she told me the school was closing down and I wouldn't be able to go." The timeline for this was around 1999 because that's when Bryan graduated from high school. At the time, Malenko was a WCW wrestler with a busy schedule and then a year later he ended up in WWE, so he wasn't able to keep up with the school. Bryan ended up going to the wrestling school operated by Shawn Michaels and Rudy Gonzales in Texas. Malenko is currently one of the top backstage agents in WWE, so at least Bryan gets to work with the guy he wanted to be trained by 15 years ago.