AEW superstar Bryan Danielson recently joined One Fall with Ron Funches to discuss a wide range of industry-related topics, which included the American Dragon reflecting on his time in WWE, admitting that he was slightly scared when he came to AEW, and how it’s easy to be an underdog when working with someone like Brock Lesnar. Highlights from the interview can be found below.
Says WWE kept wanting him to play the underdog despite the fact that he won the world title multiple times:
They wanted me to be an underdog. It was hard for the fans a little bit too, I think to connect with somebody who is an underdog, who, at this point, had won the title multiple times … Married also this beautiful woman who’s got a reality TV show. I’m really not an underdog in life anymore, right?
Says it’s easy to be an underdog against an opponent like Brock Lesnar:
Against Brock Lesnar, it’s super easy to be an underdog. When you’re wrestling guys that aren’t that much bigger than you or anything like that — or people who, they may be bigger than you, but from what they’ve done in their career-wise, the fans would expect me to win as opposed to me being the underdog.
Admits he did have some concerns going into AEW:
The scary part of it was stepping outside of this comfort zone that I had in WWE. And also, in AEW, you see them doing some pretty risky things. I was like, I don’t know if physically I can do that anymore. Over the last year-plus, I’ve proven to myself that I can, which is kind of one of the things I was looking for as I was 40 then, I’m 41 now, to see if I can still do some of those things to physically test myself. A lot of people, my wife included, are like, ‘Why do you constantly desire to test yourself, to test your body’s capabilities?’ And I don’t know why I have that desire, but I do.
(H/T and transcribed by Wrestling Inc.)