Bryan Danielson is undoubtedly a legend of professional wrestling, having had successful stints in many top companies throughout his decades-long career. Now, the current AEW World Champion has given time to talk about a myriad of topics including Vince McMahon potentially agreeing to let him enter the G1 Climax, whether he wishes he’d have worked with CM Punk in All Elite Wrestling and what it was like to wrestle Bray Wyatt.
In an interview with Inside The Ropes, Bryan first talked about the time in which Vince McMahon offered to let him do the G1 Climax whilst ‘The American Dragon’ was explaining his decision to leave WWE for AEW, although Bryan admits he’s not sure whether it would’v come to fruition should he have re-signed with WWE in 2021.
“It was early August is when I finally decided (to leave WWE for AEW). And I called him and told him, and he kinda asked me why. Then I said ‘well, this, that, the other & one of things I wanna do is work with New Japan and do the G1.’ And he did say in that moment. I don’t know if it would’ve actually come to fruition. I don’t know (if Vince knows what the G1 is). I’m not sure. He definitely knows what New Japan is and all that kinda stuff. I had told him my desire to do the G1 before. I kept pitching G1 style tournaments in WWE, but I said id really like to be able to do this thing yadayadayada, so yeah.”
-Bryan Danielson
He was then asked if he was sad that he never got to work with CM Punk while they were both in AEW. On this, Danielson said that, while sad isn’t the exact word for it, he thought something would’ve happened between them and believes it would’ve been really cool if it had. (H/T to POST Wrestling for the below transcription)
“Sad isn’t the right word. It was something that I thought was gonna happen that didn’t happen. It would have been really cool and really fun for me.”
-Bryan Danielson
Asked to touch on what working with Bray Wyatt meant to him, Bryan calls Bray a ‘wonderful human being’, and calls their live event matches together some of his favourite he had in WWE.
“We had so much fun together. He was a wonderful human being. We had a lot of fun not wrestling and a lot of fun wrestling, too. Some of my favourite matches in WWE were live event matches with Bray.”
-Bryan Danielson
Rounding it off, Danielson weighs in on the debate surrounding whether storytelling or in-ring action is more important to wrestling as a whole. Danielson says he prefers sports-style in-ring storytelling, but maintains that wrestling stories are told in many different ways and not just in the style that WWE tends to use.
“One of the things I also don’t understand is, in-ring wrestling is storytelling. Literally if you go out there and you do a wrestling match and there’s no story to it whatsoever, it’s garbage. It would be interesting for me to read it, to see what their arguments are. Because if it’s WWE-style storytelling vs in-ring storytelling, what are the pros, cons, whatever it is? I prefer more of a sports-style in-ring style of storytelling. There’s all sorts of different types of storytelling from wrestling all over the world, and I think one of the things is WWE kind of having the monopoly on the industry in the United States for so long, people think there’s this one type of storytelling, but wrestling’s told many different types of stories in many different ways for decades.”
-Bryan Danielson
Having made no secret of the fact that his career is winding down, Danielson will be making less appearances once he loses his AEW World Championship. For now, though, the star remains as the centrepiece of All Elite Wrestling, and looks to be beginning a rivalry with his former Blackpool Combat Club stablemates after they betrayed him at this past weekend’s All Out.
As always, we’ll aim to provide any further updates on Bryan Danielson as soon as we hear more.
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