By James Caldwell, Torch assistant editor

WWE NXT "Rookie" Daniel Bryan (Bryan Danielson) was interviewed in-depth by WWE to promote the NXT launch and talk about the show. I'm hitting the high points of the interview, so I recommend reading through the entire interview.

The interview was rather stunning in certain respects because WWE acknowledged a world outside of the WWE bubble as part of the NXT show trying to appeal to a younger demographic that follows wrestling on the Internet.

-- Bryan talked about a possible voting concept, which has yet to be explained, and suggested charisma will be a criteria for determining who wins the contest.

"My biggest concern is that nobody knows how they’re voting for the winner on WWE NXT," Bryan said. "So there are easily some guys on the show who are more charismatic than I am, and that’s one of the things I definitely need to work on."

-- Bryan talked about being a fan of Chris Jericho because they're both undersized wrestlers and he enjoyed watching Jericho in WCW during the 1990s when Jericho was kept at the mid-card level.

He also said he wants to work with Rey Mysterio, William Regal, Shawn Michaels (who trained Bryan), and C.M. Punk with their history in the independents, namely Ring of Honor.

"I’ve wrestled C.M. Punk on the independent scene countless times, and so getting to do that on a major stage like WWE would be so cool," he said. "I think for our hardcore fans that would be awesome - a lot of them would love to see that. So there’s a ton of guys up at WWE that I’d love to get in the ring with."

-- Bryan talked about working on his interview skills for the past four years after not being a good interview when he started out in the wrestling business.

"It really took a lot of work for me to feel comfortable speaking in front of a crowd. I can go out there in the ring and feel very comfortable, but you put me in front of a camera against a blank wall, and it's kind of intimidating," Bryan said. "Now, because I’ve been able to do that, I’ve really been able to work on that for probably the last four years, that's really what I’ve been working on. And I'm still not the best at it, but I hope doing this and being around guys who are good at that will help me improve."

-- Bryan also addressed one of his perceived weaknesses WWE drew attention to on NXT - his height. Bryan said he'll still be able to work with bigger WWE stars using his physicality as part of his character.

"In WWE I’m going to be one of the better kickers, so I think that’s to my advantage as well. One of the negatives is that I’m one of the smaller guys on the roster – I’m definitely the smallest guy on WWE NXT," Bryan said. "I need to get used to wrestling bigger guys because even in Japan they have some big heavyweights over there, but I’ve traditionally only wrestled guys who are under 225 lbs."

-- In the final part of the interview, Bryan drew attention to his submission background and said he believes that's the future of pro wrestling. He said that's also how he plans on standing out as a wrestler.

"In recent years WWE hasn’t had a lot of submission grapplers, and me being a smaller guy and not a high-flyer like Mysterio, coming in with submissions, people might be taken aback," he said. "But be open to it and realize that I think that's a big part of the future of sports-entertainment."

[Torch photos credit Wade Keller (c) PWTorch.com]

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