At Last, Dragon: Bryan Danielson Is the Best He’s Ever Been … According to Bryan Danielson

Bryan Danielson just wants you to have fun. It’s almost unfair how talented he is; he’s probably the best in-ring wrestler of the last 25 years. Very few compare to his technical prowess, his tenacity, and just how damn hard he’ll hit you. He’s won WWE’s largest prize on its grandest stage. He was one of the pioneers of the “back for the first time” American work rate promotion Ring of Honor. The award for Best Technical Wrestler in professional wrestling’s most-read newsletter is named the Bryan Danielson Award. Danielson loves all of that; he’s got fond memories of his journey and appreciation for his craft. And after decades of absolute, undisputed excellence, his plan is very simple: to wrestle until wrestling isn’t fun anymore.

Bryan Danielson didn’t show up to All Elite Wrestling on a whim. It was a chance for him to revisit some of his best memories in wrestling, and to create a few he’d had his eye on for a while. His first AEW match was a 30-minute time-limit draw against a former opponent and longtime favorite of his, Kenny Omega. Danielson had wrestled Omega in a singles match once before (at PWG One Hundred in April 2009), and followed his entire journey from the independents, to the new heights he reached in Japan, to the formation of AEW and his continued excellence there.

“I had wrestled him a couple of times on the independents before, once in a singles, once in a triple-threat match. And so you knew already then. You knew he was great. His mind just worked differently than everybody else’s,” Danielson says of Omega, highlighting Omega’s journey from New Japan Pro-Wrestling’s juniors division to his tour-de-force in the heavyweights, especially against Kazuchika Okada. Danielson is almost puzzled when asked whether he is testing the skills of AEW’s top talent. He acknowledges the skill level of his opponents and the difference between what he’s now being asked to do and what he’s did, in-ring, during the past decade. “It was more can I still hang with that kind of style? It’s a very physical style, and it wasn’t a style necessarily that we did in WWE.”

AEW

Three months after the draw with Omega, he’d face then–AEW champion “Hangman” Adam Page in back-to-back world title matches. At the annual “Winter Is Coming” edition of AEW Dynamite, they would go to a 60-minute time-limit draw. Danielson was already famous the world over for his ever-abundant gas tank, having gone 60 (-plus) minutes multiple times in his career. The fun, the joy of this outing, was in both not knowing what it’d be like to face a new opponent like Page, and knowing he’d be the first to see what Page had to offer after what is normally considered televised wrestling’s regulation period. “Hangman was a little bit different. … You see so much potential, but when you look at him, you don’t know how good he is [until] you get in the ring with him. And then one of the things that I was very impressed with was that he had never done a singles match over 30 minutes. … You watch him, and he has these incredible matches with these other people. So, for example, one of the matches that I loved from AEW before I started was he tagged with Kenny against the Young Bucks, but he was very familiar with those guys. He and I had never wrestled before. He’d never wrestled a singles match over 30 minutes, and now he and I are going to do it. The first time we’re really touching is an hour-long match on television.”

Then there’s MJF. Danielson, by nature, is very slow to speak negatively—about choices, experiences, or people. But even the most thoughtful of us have a tell, rooted in sincerity. “There’s a little bit of … I don’t hate anybody.” Whenever someone says that, the negativity is trailing them like a cornerback beaten off the line. But Danielson’s distaste for MJF is more dedicated curiosity, wondering whether it’s in the AEW World champion to match him in the environment where he thrives. MJF, before winning the championship, had been on a contractually influenced hiatus, and even after, would appear on television only when obligated. So even from MJF’s time in AEW, there’s significantly less game tape on him than the aforementioned Omega and Page. “So then you’re like, ‘OK, going in there for an hour with [someone like MJF who loves] wrestling,’ and I’m very physical when I’m out there. So it’s like, ‘Is he going to be able to hang for the hour? Can he hang with the physicality?’”

To even get the match with MJF, Danielson has had to face some of the top talent from all over the world, something that wasn’t common during his time in WWE. AEW’s been the pixelated plane to his 16-bit pugilist, as he’s faced all the world warriors one after another. “They were all guys I wanted to wrestle,” Danielson says, speaking of the gauntlet laid out before him to challenge for the AEW title. “Like, to get Bandido, Brian Cage, [Timothy] Thatcher, and then Rush. … I was jonesing to wrestle them. Like, [Konosuke] Takeshita. I didn’t even know Takeshita existed a year ago. Right out of nowhere. … And then Brian Cage. I really liked the idea of wrestling Brian Cage because he can do so many things. He’s such a big guy. Thatcher was always a dream match for me. And then Rush, when he was main-eventing Mexico, I think there’s a video somewhere of it on [his wife, WWE Hall of Famer Brie Bella’s] Instagram page. It was while I was GM and forced to retire. And I mentioned on there, I was like, ‘Oh, I want to go to Mexico and wrestle Rush.’”

In a world filled with five-star-match spreadsheets and 10-point-scale websites, one of the wrestlers who’s dominated the faux-objective wrestling metrics has very little use for them. Not only that, but he’s not really planning to reflect on them after he calls it quits, if he ever does. “I have no interest in legacy in the sense of I’m not even convinced professional wrestling is going to be around in, say, 50 years. And even if it is, I’m not overly concerned with what people think of my wrestling in 50 years’ time.” It’s not cynicism, but it’s art’s final stage: freedom. Bryan Danielson is so good at professional wrestling that he can simply go out and enjoy it. It’s almost cyclical satisfaction. He knows it’s going to bring him happiness; he knows it’ll bring his employer happiness. So he’ll get to wrestle. “It makes the boss happy when people want to buy the pay-per-views. … I derive joy from the satisfaction of actually doing it, of the energy that I feel afterward.” Danielson isn’t looking to “fix” wrestling, but he also wants to stress that it doesn’t have to be procedural, or paint-by-numbers. The younger talent of AEW that’s he so excited to be working with are Swiffer-like in their approach: fast, precise, and eager to soak up anything offered to them. But while they seek him out to talk X’s and O’s, he’s trying to get them to appreciate the feeling, the rush, and the reaction to a job well done.

“One of the things that a lot of the younger guys—and it’s very wise of them to do this, but it’s not necessarily my cup of tea after I’ve wrestled them—they say, ‘Do you have any feedback for me?’ And my thing is, ‘Did you have fun? Did you enjoy?’ Because to me, immediately after a match is not a great time. Especially when I’ve wrestled them. … It’s cultivating the idea, the sense that you can go out and really enjoy what we do, as opposed to about whether it’s good or bad. Wrestling is such a subjective thing. I could watch something and not enjoy it at all, and other people could watch it and think it’s the greatest thing ever. … You see all these social media things about, ‘Oh, these guys don’t know what they’re doing.’ And then the people who love the guys that they just talked about, they’re just like, ‘No, the guys that you like don’t know what they’re doing,’ or, ‘They’re boring,’ or, ‘They’re this or they’re that or whatever.’ And the idea is, it’s not like football, where if you give a running back the ball and he gets 5 yards every single carry, he’s a great running back. … Do people enjoy it?

“Anyway, my thing with the younger talent,” Danielson continues, “is mostly, ‘Hey, did you have fun? Were you able to experience joy out there? How did you feel about the match? Did you feel good about it?’”

AEW

If feeling is the reward, the journey toward feeling is the risk. A little show about the give and take of your career called Entourage introduced many to the idea of “one for them, one for you.” The titular team’s frontman, Vincent Chase, was a Hollywood actor more interested in art films than blockbusters. For every Medellin, the studio wanted an Aquaman. Bryan Danielson’s time in WWE, which he speaks of fondly, was lucrative enough for both him and his wife that stability vs. passion wasn’t a tough decision for him to make. “It almost felt like they were kind of transitioning me into helping more with the creative, and I would do a lot more undercard stories. And then my last WrestleMania, they just kind of threw me into the main event of WrestleMania. But I don’t know. I don’t know if … extension of career is the right way to put it, because I’ve always kind of endeavored to wrestle as long as I like wrestling. And so … if that means wrestling on my local independent show or whatever it is, I don’t care if it’s in front of 150 people. I’ve done that before. I’ve wrestled in front of 30 people.”

There were substantially more than 30 people in attendance at his events, on average, during his time in WWE. Danielson’s experience there was very positive, and he credits WWE for helping him learn how to express himself on the microphone and translate his style to television. There’s also something that a large company can offer that most places can’t: repetition. Where smaller promotions wouldn’t be able to run the same opponents multiple times a week, WWE’s house show circuit allowed him to establish a rhythm, and a familiarity, that was necessary to operate at the highest level on a televised product. “I would get to wrestle Randy Orton, who might be one of my favorite people to ever wrestle, in the sense of he and I just clicked, and Randy Orton is so good. You’re wrestling all these untelevised matches right in front of live events and … if you’re somebody who tries to continually get better, it’s a great place to hone the details … your explosiveness, of all the different things that you do. When I wrestle Randy, and when I watch Randy, and especially like, Randy at his best, I think, ‘Man, this guy is untouchable. Everything he does is perfect.’” There’s also getting rid of bad habits. To his credit, after some time, Danielson accepted change. Independent wrestling almost begs you to do each and every thing you can to draw attention to yourself; you want to create memories, you want to bring in a bigger gate, you want to parlay that into your next stop. WWE, at the time, was the stop for most performers in the business, so that part of the playbook needed to give way to a more balanced attack. “I would say in my independent run, in Ring of Honor, you had the luxury of being self-indulgent. … And I’ve gotten a different lens on it, about music, especially. I don’t watch that many movies, but in movies where you see a self-indulgent music act who like, ‘OK, I just want to riff for seven minutes, right?’ And it’s like, ‘Yeah, that’s not exactly what we want.’ There would be things I would do on the independents that I would do just solely because I enjoy it, the style of wrestling. It frustrated me at times, but one of the things that I was told early on in WWE is, ‘I don’t want to see any of that ‘thumbs-up’ bullshit.’ … What they meant was actual wrestling, right? … But in front of those live crowds who are there to be entertained and all that kind of stuff, you have to put them in places where it can be acceptable, as opposed to, ‘Hey, let’s just start off wrestling around for 15 minutes.’ That’s not something that’s great for television, you know what I mean?”

Danielson’s longevity can be attributed to a few things, most notably luck and preparation. Outside of his well-documented neck issues around WrestleMania 30, all of Danielson’s intensely physical rivalries and impossible submission contortions had never truly amounted to injury. He credits good producing, particularly that of Jamie Noble, for helping him successfully navigate that important period. “In the lead-up to [WrestleMania 30], my neck was so bad and the shooting pain down my arm. And there was one point where I had to wrestle, like, I don’t know how many matches, it was in one night on a Raw. I was exhausted because I had done a whole weekend of live events and I was just having problems putting things together. And Jamie, because, one, he’s so good, but two, he knows all my stuff, he essentially put the matches together for me, and the ability to just focus on getting physically ready and not have to mentally put together a match, that was such a blessing at the time. … I love putting matches together, you know what I mean? I did then. It’s just that when you only have so much energy and you’re in so much pain, it’s like him taking that off my plate was such a blessing.” Danielson had just under 200 matches in ROH, and more than 850 in WWE. Add in hundreds of matches in Japan, and countless matches for smaller promotions, and having only one real injury in more than 20 years likely contributes to the “fun” he’s still having to this day. But he doesn’t take it for granted. His perspective was honed by trainer William Regal, whom he worked with during both major company runs. “It’s a present to be able to go do this thing that we do. So don’t look at it as like, ‘Oh, gosh, I’ve got to do this,’ or ‘I’ve got to do that.’ It’s this idea of, ‘OK, so now you’re a little bit older.’ Darren, and I always call [Regal] Darren. William Regal and I have talked about this. Now you’re a little bit older. Let’s wrestle smarter.”

AEW

So now, both rest and relaxation are paired with preparation. AEW’s schedule is significantly lighter, trading in WWE’s three-to-four-day in-ring schedule for wrestling once a week. Danielson doesn’t hang out after shows, so when he looks at the longevity of talent like himself and current ROH World champion Claudio Castagnoli, he sees the work they put in as the major factor. If he’s not home, he’s on his way to his hotel room to sleep, or prepping with the AEW trainers. “I think our generation, one, we live cleaner lifestyles. Two, we have better access to trainers and all that kind of stuff in the sense of, like, we’re smarter with the way that we warm up. I love AEW’s medical team. I work with a trainer there named Bryce Ready. He works on me before every show.

“My warm-up for my matches is longer than my matches. People sometimes who are wrestling me, I say, ‘OK, we have to have all the major stuff sorted out pretty soon because I have to get ready to warm up an hour before my match.’ Claudio has got an extensive warm-up. A lot of the older guys, we’re just so diligent about warming up and then taking care of ourselves, getting good sleep after—we’re not going out and partying after the show. Me and Claudio ride together, so we go to the hotel immediately after the show. And as soon as I get to my room, I’m not even looking at my phone or anything like that. I’m foam rolling, I’m stretching, and I’m going to bed, and if I haven’t talked to my wife, I’ll talk to my wife. You know what I mean? I think that the main thing is the priority, and because we have to—the style is harder. We have to take care of our bodies if we want to do this for an extended period of time.”

Maybe the most impressive thing about this run is just how realistic he is about the world, and appreciative of the people around him. He knows how much of a blessing it that Dean Malenko, his childhood idol, has been one of his producers in both WWE and now in AEW, along with light heavyweight pioneer/ECW legend Jerry Lynn. He estimates that, in a wrestling combine, Dante Martin would top his vertical leap by about 2 feet. His favorite moment is barely even about him. Ahead of beating John Cena in the main event of SummerSlam, or the culmination of the Yes Movement at WrestleMania 30, or even his character-defining Team Hell No program with Kane, was being on the losing end of Kofi Kingston’s first WWE title win. “To me, the whole thing was magic,” Danielson explains. “And you look at the live events, like the number of shows that he did for WWE, the amount of TV time that he filled in every time, going out there and always having a positive attitude and all that kind of stuff. What a great human being, you know what I mean? Like I said, it was my favorite match. I think the whole thing was my favorite part of my WWE career. And conversely, the most demoralized I ever was was seeing him lose it to Brock Lesnar the way that he did.”

In the same way he helped a colleague take his final step toward superstardom, he’s doing his part to help newer talent in AEW find their way. When asked about Jade Cargill, whom he’s helped train between and before shows, there’s praise, there’s hope, and there’s an understanding of process. “She was put in with very little training—on live TV—and she has to learn to wrestle. I think it would be best for her improvement to be able to go and do some other shows. She had expressed interest to me in being able to go to Japan and work, like, a tour for three months. She would come back a completely different wrestler.”

Danielson continues, laying out a plan of action that could turn Cargill into a complete package. “I had to learn wrestling. The physical act of wrestling came very easily to me, and the understanding of putting together matches and stuff. I had some great people that I worked with. The hard part was the performance aspect of being a star. She already has the star aspect of it, so for her, it’s catching up on the wrestling aspect of it. And I think she’s done a very good job with that, especially given the circumstances; it’s not like she’s getting to wrestle even 10 matches a month. She’s getting to wrestle at most, what, two matches a month. It’s hard to get better at the wrestling stuff when you’re wrestling so infrequently. But she shows up, she works hard, and she already has that star presence that goes a long way. So yeah, I think she’s going to do really well.”

MJF’s first PPV title defense of the AEW World Championship is against Danielson in a 60-minute Iron Man match; this will undoubtedly be MJF’s most difficult match to date. Danielson says that his experience, his security, and the peace he’s earned have him at the absolute peak of his powers. It’s akin to Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s eighth-round TKO of Henry Bruseles, where he’s so in control that he’s picking NFL games with commentator Jim Lampley, who he can somehow hear over the crowd. Danielson’s both cognizant of the moment and so at peace with life that his mind can process other worlds outside the arena where he has no equal. “All the younger guys that I’ve been wrestling—the Daniel Garcias, the Wheeler Yutas, the Lee Moriartys, the Takeshitas, I wrestled Bandido a couple of weeks ago—I’ve been nothing but pleasantly surprised. … On Sunday, I’m going to be in the main event of an AEW pay-per-view, which is actually, to me, the most terrifying thing of all. Not because [of] the expectations or anything like that. … I’m a dad. I go to bed early. You want me to go wrestle for an hour? I should be in bed at this time.”

An earlier version of this piece misstated the name of Danielson’s trainer.

Cameron Hawkins writes about pro wrestling, Blade II, and obscure ’90s sitcoms for Pro Wrestling Torch, Pro Wrestling Illustrated, and FanSided DDT. You can follow him on Twitter at @CeeHawk.