"YES!" by Daniel Bryan

BOOK TITLE: YES!: My Improbable Journey to the Main Event at Wrestlemania
AUTHOR: Daniel Bryan (with Craig Tello)
YEAR: 2015
GENRE: Nonfiction
SUBGENRE: Pro-Wrestling Memoir
GRADE: Pass


In this David vs. Goliath life story, little Aberdeen, Washington boy Bryan Danielson gets hooked on wrestling from watching The Ultimate Warrior, Bret Hart, Chris Benoit, and Dean Malenko on TV. He became so passionate about it that after graduating high school, he got in his car and traveled to San Antonio, Texas to learn how to wrestle. He went from wrestling in Wal-Mart parking lots to the Tokyo Dome, from high school gyms to reputable American arenas, from English carnivals to his ultimate destination, the New Orleans Superdome, where he won the WWE World Heavyweight Championship by defeating three future Hall of Famers in one long, grueling night.

What makes this life story so amazing is that nobody expected the now christened Daniel Bryan to make it as far as he did. There are hundreds of thousands of wrestlers all over the world and only a select few of them achieve universal fame and fortune. Daniel Bryan is way under six feet tall, only slightly north of 200 lbs., and has more facial hair than a Serengeti lion. Against much bigger opponents, Daniel seemed like the ultimate underdog. He took a lot of beatings and suffered many horrific injuries along his path to success, but that’s what paying your dues in the wrestling industry is all about. Not only had Daniel Bryan paid his dues, but he paid 100% interest.

Daniel is the kind of person you want to see succeed and part of it is because of his personality. If you were to approach this man on the streets, you would find him to be a friendly, laidback, humble human being. He knows wrestling doesn’t owe him anything, in fact, he owes wrestling everything. Underneath all of that modesty is a fiery passion that pushes him through the worst obstacles in his life. Whether those obstacles are amassing a ten match losing streak on a boring WWE sideshow or losing his father and crying relentlessly because of it, Daniel Bryan will not stay down for anything. He’ll tell you everything’s okay one minute and burst into passionate flames the next. It’s part of his Gemini Syndrome, or his dual nature as most people call it.

If you’re in an absolute hurry to get through this book, don’t worry, it’s a fast read. It may not feel that way with Craig Tello’s play-by-play introductions at the beginning of each chapter, but over time you get used to having an extra writer there to narrate the action. Daniel Bryan’s own writing style is no-nonsense and to the point, which is a style most fast-paced writers employ. However, with too little description and liberal use of the word “very”, it’s easy to tell that Daniel Bryan doesn’t write for a living. I’m not saying this is a badly written book, because it’s not. But if you’re expecting a celebrity memoir, you’ve got one.

I’ve been a Daniel Bryan fan ever since I started paying attention to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter awards in 2008. I hadn’t seen one Daniel Bryan match prior to NXT in 2010, but apparently he’s famous in the online community for being the Best Technical Wrestler, Most Outstanding Wrestler, and having a Match of the Year. The first two awards he won multiple times over many years and eventually became the Most Outstanding Wrestler of the Decade for 2000-2009. It also helps matters that Daniel Bryan is an environmentally conscious animal lover who rubs shoulders with poor people. The fact that a mere hungry man like Mr. Bryan can accomplish so much through hard work and passion is a story that epics are made of. We love the underdog story and always will.