Daniel Bryan partially blames incident with John Cena for his WWE firing in 2010

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SLAM Wrestling has an interview with Daniel Bryan, who was promoting his match with John Cena this Sunday at SummerSlam. Bryan noted that part of the reason he was fired by WWE in 2010, was because he spat in John Cena’s face when the Nexus attacked Cena on RAW. In the angle, the Nexus debuted as a group and attacked John Cena before destroying the ring. Bryan took things too far in the segment by spitting in Cena’s face and choking ring announcer Justin Roberts with his tie.

“One of the reasons that I got fired in 2010 was for spitting in John’s face; it was two things that got me fired — it was choking Justin Roberts with a tie and spitting in Cena’s face right before I kicked him in the head,” Bryan said. “It was those two things.”

This isn’t part of the storyline to build for Bryan’s match with Cena, as Bryan wrote shortly after his firing that spitting in Cena’s face was part of the reason he was let go.

“WWE is very serious about adhering to their PG guidelines, and apparently my actions during the NXT attack on John Cena, namely choking announcer Justin Roberts with his tie and spitting in Cena’s face, crossed the boundaries of what is considered PG.

“Perhaps the choking was too violent or perhaps the spit was too demeaning. I apologized for both immediately following the incident; but I would be a hypocrite if I apologized for putting everything I have into the attack. I would much rather have gone too far than to come up too short,” write Bryan.

Days after Bryan was fired, Cena was asked about it during an appearance on Busted Open.

“It stands where it is,” Cena said. “I believe Bryan was given his release, and this is just my belief, it’s complete speculation so basically you’re going off my secondhand knowledge, it’s something to do with violating our PG content agreement which is very serious. It was tough for us to get that [TV-PG] logo in the beginning. For us to violate that content agreement, we get in trouble with our TV providers, we get in trouble with our sponsors, it pretty much is not good business. I think that is the reason upon the Bryan Danielson release but on the same token, for a young man such as him to make an impact on the WWE Universe in that short a time, it says something about who he is as a person and where he belongs amongst our group.”