AEW superstar Bryan Danielson recently spoke to Ariel Helwani on the MMA Hour about a number of different topics, including the American Dragon’s thoughts on WWE cutting a bunch of talent, and how it’s a complicated scenario due to his father-in-law being John Laurinaitis. Highlights from the interview are below.
Says the WWE cuts are complicated because his father-in-law is John Laurinaitis, but believes that talent should have the option to be released from their contract when they request it:
“In some ways I get it. In some ways, I feel like it’s not right. It’s hard because my father-in-law is the head of talent relations. One of the things that I’ve always had a hard time with, and I’ve been fired from WWE twice so I kind of get this – it’s one thing if somebody does something bad but like for example, if you’re under a contract with WWE and you’re not happy or you’re not happy with the company or whatever it is, if they can fire you and give you 90 days [then] you should be able to give them 90 days to be released from your contract.”
Thinks that WWE releasing talent when they are hugely profitable isn’t right:
“On the flip side, if they are only firing you because of budget cuts where they are more profitable than ever, I just don’t think that’s right. They signed a lot of people to high end contracts when AEW kind of started to keep people from going to AEW or whatever. But then they realized, ‘oh, AEW can’t sign all of these people’…”
Understands that it’s business at the end of the day, and the mentality in America is to be profitable:
“You offered them a contract to be with you for three years or whatever. If you overpaid them, that’s your bad and you’re still a very profitable company. That’s kind of my take on it. I wish they wouldn’t, you know what I mean? But I also understand it’s business in America [and] profits tend to be the most important thing a lot of times. You can even talk to the people within the companies. Like I love Vince McMahon, I do. I’ve learned so much from him but companies are not people anymore. They’ve taken on this whole — legally, they are their own corporation. For whatever reason, even good people make decisions that benefit a company that actually hurt the people that have worked so hard for the company. That’s hard on me mentally but that’s also the system that has been rewarded financially here in the United States.”
How Tony Khan has only released people from AEW due to disciplinary reasons:
“Tony Khan, I think he’s only let go of 3 people since the pandemic started and they were disciplinary reasons. Other people who are no longer with the company, if he didn’t want them then okay their contract expired and then okay we’ve chosen not to re-sign you and then you kind of know. That’s how he kind of approaches it. Until I kind of saw that and dealt with that…AEW from a money standpoint makes way less money than WWE and so there were some things like that too that led me to go to AEW as well.”
(H/T and transcribed by WrestlingNews.Co)