Bryan Danielson says Vince McMahon asked him to compare WWE to AEW.
Five years ago, All Elite Wrestling was formed with the goal of being a genuine alternative to WWE. Their roster is ever growing, currently featuring some of the best talent in the world, and the company continue to hit huge milestones such as when over 80,000 people packed into Wembley Stadium this past August for All In. But, with WWE still clearly the top dog in the wrestling world, many wonder just how far AEW will continue to grow.
Speaking on an SXSW panel, Bryan Danielson was asked the question of what AEW could do to reach the next level, to which he said that they don’t want to change things that are already working. Interestingly, he recalled a previous meeting in which Vince McMahon himself took an interest in what AEW were doing in comparison to WWE.
“If you look at Dynamite and look at ‘where can we make improvements to gain an audience here or to touch people to a different level. The idea is you can’t make big changes because Dynamite is already successful. This is what we were talking about in WWE. Vince McMahon actually called me one night, I was part of WWE creative, and he called me one night and said, ‘What is AEW doing that we’re not doing?’ I went back and watched eight straight weeks of TV within the span of six days and was like, ‘there is a whole list of things.’ What you don’t want to do, in getting to the next level, is to change the things that are already working because there are so many things already working. Then, it’s experimenting with different things,”
-Bryan Danielson
Danielson remains an active competitor, having left WWE for AEW in 2021, but The American Dragon has made no secret that his full time in-ring career will be winding down very soon. Having given ideas in the past, it’s possible Bryan continues to work with Tony Khan on parts of AEW’s creative once he has scaled back his in-ring career.
As always, we’ll aim to provide any further updates on Bryan Danielson as soon as we hear more.
H/T to Fightful for the transcription.
