Bryan Danielson recently sat down with Kenny McIntosh from Inside The Ropes and discussed his run as The Planet’s Champion in WWE, and a certain line he yelled on live television that could have been misinterpreted.
The new AEW World Champion looked back on his memorable run in 2019 as The Planet’s Champion in WWE, complete with eco title and promos preaching sustainability, and stated that he was shocked that a promo where he yelled at Vince McMahon got greenlit and admitted that the inspiration from the character was in part due to his own feelings about needing to do more for the planet.
“So the one that I was really surprised by, and I actually got invited to speak at Rutgers University after this promo,” he said. “I did an interview with AJ Styles and Vince, and I said in the promo that Vince’s generation is the real problem of everything and they bowed down to him. I was surprised they let me say any of that because these concepts were my ideas, but then we still had to pitch it. There’s still a format and a script. [But] He was like, Yeah, okay. I was like really, I can say all this!?”
Danielson continued, “I had so much fun, that was so much fun. Because, you know, we all have different aspects of our personality, right? There is very much a part of me that is like The Planet’s Champion. Except instead of putting that scorn on other people, I don’t look at people and be like you should be doing this, or you should be doing this. I look at myself and think I should be doing this, I should be doing that, I shouldn’t be consuming as much. So it’s like yeah, all that stuff that was twisted on the American fans was actually my own self-loathing [laughs].”
Elsewhere in the interview, “The American Dragon” recalled some of his more memorable segments while with WWE. Beginning by recounting his fascination with bears while announcing Saturday Morning Slam, Danielson also recalled the unique way he asked The Street Profits for a fist bump after winning a match on SmackDown.
“There’s a couple of things actually that I’m really proud of that I even got through the many layers of things that you have to get through in WWE,” Danielson said. “One of the things, I did commentary on a Saturday Morning Slam, and it was Claudio wrestling R-Truth. I just talked about bears the whole time, and then Claudio knew. I told Claudio about it and so they did the bear hug and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, that was a blast.”
He continued, “In the pandemic, I got ‘Fist me boys!’ on TV. It was a live shot and it was with The Street Profits and I think Kevin Owens. We just did something. We’re all good guys, and in my head I’m thinking I’m the old, uncool guy. The Street Profits, both of them are legitimately super cool dudes, so much fun to be around, right? I come to the back, we’ve got this live shot, and we’re just excited about winning. Then at the end of it I just go ‘Okay, fist me boys!'”
Check out the complete Bryan Danielson interview at ITRWrestling.com.
