Big E recently stated in an interview that Daniel Bryan played a role in him getting a singles push. While appearing on the After The Bell podcast, Mustafa Ali also gave credit to Bryan for his initial push on Smackdown:
“I remember, I was the last one to be invited into 205 Live, but I was the first guy to leave. It was a lot of pressure as you just don’t know. I show up to TV one day and they go ‘hey, you’re wrestling the WWE Champion Daniel Bryan on SmackDown and it’s the first segment… and you have an in-ring promo with him, and this, and then the aftermath.’ And you’re just like ‘you know I’m Ali, right?’”
“At the time Road Dogg was producing SmackDown and it was very clearly explained to me – ‘this is a one-time deal, you’re not full-time on SmackDown, this is just an opportunity’. Bryan being as gracious as he always is, made sure that I made an impact. And that’s another guy man, he’ll never really confirm to me what happened, and then yeah I made the most of that opportunity and that turned into coming back into TV the next week and then being told there that ‘hey, you’re no longer on 205, you’re a full-time member of SmackDown.”
(quotes courtesy of SportsKeeda.com)
