Bryan Danielson On His Decision To Go to AEW, Being Intimidated By the Wrestling Style There

Bryan Danielson recently weighed in on his decision to go from WWE to AEW, the one moment that made him think he wouldn’t be able to compete there and more. Danielson was a guest on Renee Paquette and Miesha Tate’s Throwing Down podcast, and you can see some highlights below (per Wrestling Inc):

On AEW providing new opportunities for him: “I think AEW’s done a really great job. So much so that I was very happy where I worked before, right, and still chose to go to AEW. I think that speaks a lot for the product they’ve been producing already. I’m trying to create my wrestling paradise, right? It’s like if wrestling could be how I envisioned it, it would be like this, and that’s what I want with me and Jon [Moxley].

“So that would be really the only thing. I think we have a great amount of diversity in the sense of different styles of wrestling and different styles of acts. You know, you come in and it’s like a mix of all these different things. I think that’s a lot of fun.”

On his decision to jump to AEW: “There wasn’t one specific aha moment. There was the fact that I had to make a choice eventually. To be fair, both options would’ve been really fun. You know what I mean? I was looking at, you know, we only get this one life, so I wanted to go explore, I wanted to test my limits. I think that when I was watching AEW, it really kind of scared me a little bit in the sense of, ‘could I hang with some of the stuff that these guys are doing?’”

On being intimidated by the wrestling style in AEW: “The fast pace. The action. There’s more and more daredevil moves [In AEW]. I was actually watching one thing that really demoralized me and made me think like ‘Oh, I’m not gonna go to AEW.’ Cody [Rhodes] wrestled Penta, right? All of a sudden Cody, who I traveled with in WWE, he’s doing a top rope Frankensteiner where they’re both standing on the top rope. I was like ‘oh my gosh. Am I gonna have to do that?’ I don’t think I can. I’m 40. It was one of those things where it scared me a little bit but also excited me. There’s something so appealing about that, about living your life on the boundaries of what you think you can do and what you know you can do.”