Image via All Elite Wrestling
If 2021 has taught us anything about pro wrestling, it’s that competition is almost vital in bringing out the best in any organization. Many are calling what’s going on between the WWE and All Elite Wrestling a “war,” and they wouldn’t be wrong; the amount of ratings-watching and performers making moves to the opposition feels very similar to the Monday Night Wars of the 1990s, where Vince McMahon’s WWF faced their stiffed competition in Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling, during an era where legends like “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and factions like the nWo reigned supreme.
Out of the ashes of the demise of WCW sprung a vibrant independent wrestling scene, with Ring Of Honor being one of the more groundbreaking federations to rise in the early 2000s, helped by “Founding Fathers” like Bryan Danielson. Known to many as “The American Dragon,” Danielson spent seven years at the top of the independent scene, holding ROH’s World and Pure championships as well as Pro Wrestling Guerilla’s World Championship on two separate occasions, while also making his mark in Japan and many federations in between. This was all before he landed in the WWE in 2009, embarking on a tenure that would give him a new(ish) name (Daniel Bryan), millions of new supporters, and a 12-year timeframe where he’s main evented WrestleMania twice, and is their twenty-sixth Triple Crown Winner, including being a four-time WWE Champion. To many, Danielson is one of the greatest professional wrestlers walking the plant, but he’s also had a history of brain injuries that kept him out of the ring for some time, but it was evident that Danielson was still able to go based on the series of matches he’s put on since his in-ring return in 2018.
All of this changed when his WWE contract expired this past May. As the dirtsheets do, the talk of where Danielson was going to land—and the back-and-forth about his old allegiances and his desire to push his limits—ended with Danielson making a surprise appearance at the end of AEW All Out 2021 earlier this month. Since then, he’s lined up a non-title match with current AEW World Heavyweight Champion Kenny Omega, another individual many see as the best in the world in the squared circle. Danielson and Omega’s match (their first match since 2009) is a part of All Elite Wrestling’s two-night Grand Slam event, which will be the first-ever pro wrestling event held at the Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York, an event that AEW President Tony Khan hopes to run annually in New York. Bryan vs. Omega takes place on AEW Dynamite tonight; the second night of Grand Slam features CM Punk taking on Powerhouse Hobbs on Friday night’s AEW Rampage.
Ahead of his AEW in-ring debut, Complex caught up with Danielson, who opens up about facing off against Kenny Omega and wanting to match his physicality, as well as wanting this to be an important moment for the company as a whole. Danielson also speaks on what AEW talent he may be eyeing for potential match-ups, a number of decisions that led him to sign with AEW, how he wants to be remembered, and why there’s no reason to be killing cows to make championships. But first, we had to discuss his name.
I just want to say, I’ve been having to make sure I’m saying “Bryan Danielson.” I was introduced to you as “Daniel Bryan,” and your Wikipedia still says “Daniel Bryan” on it. I don’t want to say it’s this big leap, I just don’t want to call you Daniel, because that is not who you are.
I really understand the mix-up. [Laughs] Sometimes I give people a hard time if they call me Daniel, Bryan, but it’s completely understandable. The names are so close together. That’s one of the reasons why my name became Daniel Bryan. Bryan Danielson, my real name, I wrestled for 10 years on the independents as Bryan Danielson and “The American Dragon” and all that stuff. They asked me to come up with a new name that they could own when I signed with WWE. William Regal is actually the smart one who suggested Daniel Brian. I came up with names like Buddy Peacock. [Laughs]
I remember on The New Day podcast, they talked about the insane list of names that they got from the WWE before settling on The New Day. Shouts out to William Regal, you really dodged a bullet. Shifting gears, I remember hearing about “The American Dragon” when you first started appearing on NXT, but I hadn’t actually seen much of your work before then. In looking into your history with Kenny Omega, I didn’t realize that your first match with Omega was back in 2009, at PWG One Hundred. In those 12 years, you two have both had very amazing careers, individually. Talk about the differences in your matchup now compared to 12 years ago.
That match was a different animal. In the sense of it was really, really comedy. I was one of the top names in the independents and had a long run, was Ring of Honor champion and had done a lot of main events and all that kind of stuff. Kenny’s career, I think at that point, he had gone to Japan a little bit, but he was just starting to really break out. In the last 10 years, he’s turned into one of the best pro wrestlers on the planet while I’ve been in WWE. Meanwhile, I had an incredible career being able to main event two WrestleManias and having all these amazing moments in WWE. It really just feels like it feels like the biggest match of my career, like in both the person I’m wrestling and the fact that we’ve been separated for so long, but then also in this moment that we’re at, in the sense of where we’re at, as far as AEW’s momentum, as Arthur Ashe Stadium, the first-ever wrestling show there, right. The fact that if we really go out there and knock it out of the park, not just me and Kenny, but the entire show, there’s a real chance to gain even more momentum, because I think there’s going to be a lot of eyes on this. And so, in a lot of those respects, even like the WrestleMania main events that I’ve had. If I went out there and performed horribly, people might not have enjoyed the show, but they’d still watch Raw the next day. You know what I mean? This feels like it has the ability to get more viewers to AEW.
In reading some of the things you’ve said over the last couple of weeks, you’ve mentioned the idea of wanting to push your limits. You have also mentioned that Vince was “overprotective” of you. Being men of a certain age, married with children, I kind of understand where you’re probably hearing a lot of different things from a lot of different places in regards to your career right now, but you’re also in a place where I just saw the Lucha Bros and the Young Bucks tear it up in a cage. When you talk about wanting to push your limits, how far are you willing to go? How soon are we going to see you pull off a Lucha Bros/Young Bucks-style match? Or is that what you’re trying do? Where are you at in this phase of your career?
First off, there are so many things, the Lucha Bros and the Young Bucks can do that I just I have the ability to do.
Right.
Look at the Lucha Bros. Oh my gosh, like….
Amazing.
Fenix specifically does some things that you just like blow your mind. So, I’m not talking about stuff like that, but this is kind of the context. Vince McMahon has multiple times likened me to a racehorse that needs a bit in his mouth, because if you don’t have the bit, the horse will just run himself into the ground. Keep in mind, I don’t know if that’s actually true. I don’t know if that’s why they have the bit, leave that where it is. [Ed note: Racing bits, explained.] He had told me that multiple times in the sense of like, “Hey, I have to be protective of you because if I don’t...”
With the WWE, I did 227 matches in a year, and if you go all out [in] every one of those matches like I am prone to do? It doesn’t matter if we’re in Mobile, Alabama, if there’s 300 people there or 5,000 people there, they all paid a ticket to go there. I remember, I was only able to go to one show when I was a kid and my mom and dad, because we didn’t have very much money, they saved up to take me to the Tacoma Dome. We were in the nosebleeds, right, [but I remember] how important that show was to me. And so you remember that as a performer, as far as like, “Hey, go out there and give it everything you’ve got every night.” Well then, then there’s like, “Hey, we have to kind of manage you a little bit,” and in the back of my head, what I’m saying is, “that might work for racehorses, but I kind of prefer the lifestyle of wild horses instead.” Like I want to be able to run free and be able to judiciously make my own decisions as far as how hard I want to go. Kenny Omega wrestles a very physical style. I want to be able to match him in all of that physicality and more.
You’ve been doing this since 2002; that’s a lot of time to be putting on peak performance matches. I imagine you look at that the AEW roster—there’s a lot of talent over there. Rey Fenix and Kenny Omega are just two people out of an amazing roster. Is there anybody you’re looking at right now that you’re like, “yeah, I can’t wait to mix it up with them at some point”?
There are so many, and there are so many people of different styles, right? There’s a mix of veteran guys and younger guys that I’d love to get in the ring with… I’d love to get in the ring with Jon Moxley, where we’re able to just do whatever we want. You know what I mean? Same thing with Cody. And I wrestled those guys before, but then there are the younger guys. I know Punk really wanted to wrestle Darby Allin. I want to wrestle Darby Allin, too. I think he’s great. There are the Jungle Boys and the MJFs, but then there’s also guys like Daniel Garcia who wrestles a very technical style. I’d love to wrestle him.
There’s Dante Martin, who is like, 20 years old, right? He just does these things. I don’t think I met him at All Out. I met him in the hotel the next day, and I was like, “dude.” I’ve watched all sorts of wrestling from all over the world, and he does things that I’ve never seen before. It’s rare that I see something I’ve never seen before, you know what I mean? That’s one of the reasons I decided to go to AEW, because there are so many new matchups for me, and so many things that I look at and be like, “whoa, that’s exciting. That seems like a lot of fun.”
This week, AEW announced their partnership with The Owen Hart Foundation, and it had me thinking about how AEW handled Brodie Lee’s situation. For me as a fan, it was a beautiful thing, especially when you start to think about the legacy that gets left behind. It makes me wonder, though: for you as a performer, as somebody who’s been in this for decades with more time in the tank as you embark on your AEW journey. Do you think about your legacy as a performer?
I think about where I can be of most use, I don’t ever think about legacy. At the end of the day, think it’s Carl Sagan who said we’re just this pale blue dot, you know what I mean? I really hate to assign too much importance to pro wrestling in the sense of legacy or whatever it is, because at the end of the day, so much of it, that’s my legacy. If people think about me after I’m gone, I want it to be very similar to how people think of Brodie. We had so much fun, the last European tour that I did with him, I forget what the other match I would do was, but I was in another match and then I would alternate wrestling him first. On the first match on the show, we had so much fun. He was great in the ring. William Regal describes him as magic, but that’s not what people talk about when they talk about it, they talk about how great of a person he was.
They talk about the man.
Talk about how much he loves his children, his wife and how he would drive home immediately. If possible, immediately after the show, he’s not getting food, he’s not doing this. He’s immediately getting home because he wants to be with his wife, kids. When I pass, if people talk about me at all, they can mention the wrestling stuff. I want to leave a legacy that’s like, “whoa, he loved this kid. He loved his wife. He tried to be the best father and husband that he could, he tried to help his community.” There’s all these things that will impact people greater.
To me, wrestling has, oddly enough, always seemed like this very selfish act. I do it because it’s fun. I love it. Makes my mind go. It makes my body go. The energy I get from the crowd, I get more from that than I feel like than they will ever get watching me. But you have to be away from your family, so it felt selfish, like always leaving and going to do these things that I really enjoyed, even if I was sleeping on floors and stuff like that. At the end of the day, especially since I’ve had my daughter four years ago, my mind has switched from being mostly selfish and a little bit of service to more service and less selfishness. When you identify things that you’re doing because it’s a selfish desire or whatever it is, [I’ve been] trying to get in that mental space where you can identify that and be like, “OK, maybe I enjoy this, but is this good? Is this helpful? Is this where we’re heading? Is this a positive direction?” That’s where my focus has been mostly, and that’s what I want any sort of legacy to be.
I think that’s beautiful. I only even asked because, even back before your last WWE run, in the back of my mind I wondered where you were, mentally. Coming off of the medical issues and that whole ordeal, it all comes down to motivation. It’s actually interesting; it’s almost like you made the transition to AEW at the right time, given how the WWE’s tour schedule has recently just ramped up. I would imagine spending less time on the road is better for you in the long run.
It is in the sense of it’s for sure less time away from my family, and that was a big deciding point, too. What’s interesting [is] a lot of people frame it in the sense of I had two choices, which is AEW or WWE, but in reality, I feel like I had four choices: WWE, AEW, not signing with anybody and just doing independent, stuff here and there, and I’m sure AEW would’ve taken me for the big matches that I wanted to do or whatever. And the other option that I considered was just stepping away from wrestling for a while and just focusing on being a father. The reason why I wanted to take the summer off is because my daughter started preschool in the fall. I wanted to be able to be there with her in the summer, every day. For the first time since my daughter’s been born, I was with my kids every single day, and it was so good. And there was a part of me that I just wanted to keep doing that until at least our son was going to school, too, so I could be there with them for that time. And then, if I wanted, to go have fun wrestling or whatever it is. That was another option that I seriously considered and it was kind of a family decision, too, in the sense of like, “Hey, what’s best for us? What’s also best for our children’s future? You know, the future is very uncertain.” Setting our kids up for success in that sort of thing. So there were a lot of things that played into these decisions.
Again, I understand as a fellow married father, there are conversations you have to have outside of whatever’s going to happen in the squared circle.
Yeah. I’m not the boss. [Laughs] If anybody’s ever watched Total Bellas, they know I’m not the boss, Brie’s the boss.
Now before we get out of here, I want to ask you about sneakers. The Young Bucks are sneaker guys. Kenny Omega is, from what I understand, a sneaker guy. It’s to the point where they’re being incorporated in storylines and matches. While I don’t take you as a sneaker guy, I have to ask: a) Do you think that you might get into sneakers and b), have you, in the few times you’ve been around everybody, have you overheard any sneaker conversations happening?
So I haven’t heard it from them because I haven’t been around the Young Bucks specifically that much, but I heard a lot of sneaker talk in WWE. There are some sneaker guys in WWE for sure. And I was blown away. And then when I got to AEW, the Young Bucks, a pair of their sneakers were stolen out of their bag. People steal sneakers?
Yeah.
“Those sneakers are worth like $6,000.” I was like, “$6,000? That’s more money than I paid for my first car.” I can’t even fathom. And I think even the concept of spending that much money on protecting your feet, right? Essentially, as homo sapiens, our feet are very soft and now we walk around a lot of concrete and so we need to protect them. And the cold and the rain. I just can’t fathom spending that much money on that when, when you look out at the world, that money could be used so much better elsewhere.
Well then I have to ask. That makes me wonder, because you debuted an eco-friendly championship, that thing was unique. Would you have plans on doing that to the AEW World Heavyweight Championship?
See, so that’s a fun character thing to talk about. I don’t know why any championship belt nowadays would need to be made out of real cow skin, right? I don’t know what the purpose is. They have synthetic leathers that look every bit as good. I hate to get on my environmental soapbox. [Laughs]
Go ahead! [Laughs]
Nobody likes that. That’s why I was able to be such a good bad guy in WWE. Get on the soapbox.
I loved it, it reminded me of Bret during his pro-Canadian heel run. I appreciate the fact that your stance was, “you guys are killing the planet and I’m right. That’s it!”
So I’m not somebody who’s going to tell everybody not to eat meat, right? You know, humans are omnivores, all that kind of stuff. But I do think the unnecessary slaughter of animals should be avoided in the sense of like wearing leather, having a leather belt, or having the leather as the base for a championship. We have synthetic materials that look just as good or, and are more durable. I think it would be great to transition away from real leather to a synthetic leather and never even tell people about it. “Hey, we’re just doing this because this is what’s right.” The problem with that WWE Championship is then after I lost the title of the Kofi, they had to kill another cow to make a belt.
You know what the greatest thing about that eco-friendly championship was? I didn’t have to take it out of my bag when I go through security at the airport.