Back in 2016, shortly after retiring from wrestling, Daniel Bryan was trying to get legitimately fired by WWE.

As part of the Brand Split in 2016, WWE made Daniel Bryan the General Manager for SmackDown, as well as the host of Talking Smack, the talkshow after SmackDown each week.

Bryan had retired from the ring in February 2016 due to a series of neck and concussion-related injuries, but WWE wanted to keep him on, just in a non-wrestling capacity.

That wasn't something Bryan wanted to do however, as the former WWE Champion was determined to wrestle again, even if it meant having to leave the company.

Daniel Bryan tried to get fired by WWE in 2016

In fact, Bryan wanted to leave so bad that during a recent interview with Renee Paquette (formerly Renee Young) on Oral Sessions, he said that he was trying to get fired during his time hosting Talking Smack.

A little bit of a nightmare for me. I enjoyed it in the sense of sometimes I was trying to get fired, so bringing up fisting on Talking Smack

As you can see above, Bryan bought up 'fisting' during one of the shows, and explained that he did so in an attempt to annoy WWE higher-ups so much that they'd fire him.

He then spoke about how he'd bring up James Ellsworth having to "huge hog", something that WWE told him not to do, again in an attempt to get fired.

“Please don’t talk about James Ellsworth having a huge hog, and I would just bring it up constantly because I was so frustrated at not being cleared to wrestle that I was ready to go. Sometimes they would bring me to TV just to do Talking Smack.”

And footage has now resurfaced online of one of the moments from Talking Smack where Bryan tried to get himself let go by WWE.

A clip of Bryan saying that SmackDown liked 'fisting', based on the iconic 'fist' logo has been doing the rounds on Twitter again, with it being pointed out that this was the ex-WWE star trying to get released.

Bryan was able to come out of retirement roughly two years after this in time for WrestleMania 34 in April 2018.

After winning another WWE Champion, Daniel Bryan (now Bryan Danielson) left the company at the expiration of his contract in May 2021, going on to join AEW later that year.