AEW superstar Bryan Danielson recently appeared on Wrestling Observer Radio to hype this evening’s Revolution pay-per-view, where the American Dragon will take on former world champion Jon Moxley in a high-stakes grudge matchup. Highlights from the interview are below.
Says he was okay with retirement until he became the SmackDown GM:
“The emotions from being out, I was trying to become ok with it and I think I probably would’ve been. I think things would’ve been a lot… My life would be very different if they hadn’t brought me in as the GM of SmackDown because I was forced to be around it. When I retired, I started thinking, ‘OK, what are other things that I can do? What are other things I enjoy?’, that sort of thing. I started signing up for all these things, I was enrolled in ASU for an environmental program, I had signed up for a permaculture design course that was six weeks long to do regenerative agriculture type stuff. So, that was going to be my focus. I was like, ‘OK, I kind of have to accept this. Then they brought me in as the GM of SmackDown and I had to be around it every week. It also put a halt to my other ambitions. I’m not great with technology so the thought of doing classes digitally and taping SmackDown Tuesdays. Flying out on Monday, doing SmackDown on Tuesday, flying back on Wednesday, that’s missing three days of class time. So it really put a damper on other things.”
Says a matchup between AJ Styles and Jon Moxley (Dean Ambrose) in WWE made him work to come out of retirement:
“Then, I remember specifically I was watching Mox and AJ Styles – Mox is really interesting when I look at it now, the role he has played in me being where I’m at right now. I watched Mox and AJ Styles wrestling and I had to sit ringside for it for whatever the story was, I don’t remember exactly. I watched it, I got so emotionally bothered, like upset that I wasn’t able to wrestle. At that point I was kind of thinking, ‘I think I’m fine’, and that was the real turning point. Then I went home and I talked to Brie, it was like, ‘Hey, I think I want to wrestle’. She’s like, ‘Well, you’re going to have to prove to them that you can wrestle, so what does that take?’. Then I started to come up with a plan and started working on some things and that’s where the story took us.”
(H/T and transcribed by Inside the Ropes)