During his recent interview with the Wrestling Observer AEW superstar Bryan Danielson spoke about his in-ring style, and how he’s attempting to move away from bigger/higher-risk bumps in order to be able to wrestle in the business longer. Highlights from the American Dragon’s talk can be found below.
Says he does not want to wrestle a full-time schedule after his current AEW contract comes to an end:
We’re all being smarter with our training and technology and health and the health profession is better. We’re better able to take care of ourselves. I believe I’ll be able to wrestle for a long period of time and I kind of aspire to wrestle for a long period of time, but don’t want to wrestle full-time after this contract is up. That may change once this contract is up. This contract may be up and it’s like, ‘well, I still have the itch to do it.’ I don’t want to miss out on my kids’ lives.
How he’s begun to mimic the style of Minoru Suzuki or Yuji Nagata so he can wrestle longer:
One of the things I think too is, I am changing my wrestling style a little bit to be more like Nagata and Minoru Suzuki as opposed to bigger bumps and that sort of thing. The heavier bump taking style, you’re less likely to have a long career with that as opposed to a hard-hitting style where Nagata will be in hard-hitting wars, but he’s not doing necessarily the top rope dragon suplexes and that stuff, which is the stuff that potentially….when you talk to Edge, it’s those ladder matches and big things that may have taken years off his career. That’s what I’m looking at now, from a longevity perspective, but also from a perspective of, when my son is 15 years old, I’m going to be 55 and I want to be able to do all the things you do with a teenager if he wants to play baseball or wrestle, I want to be able to roughhouse with him.
Discusses how top athletes spend a lot of money to keep themselves in top physical condition:
My dad was not that old and able to do those things. I don’t want my shoulders blown out so I can’t throw a ball when they want to play baseball. I also look at people like Tom Brady and LeBron James. Tom Brady, the work he’s put in, LeBron James, he came out and said he spends a million dollars on his body every year just so he can continue to play basketball at the highest level. That was a light switch that went off in my head because I’m a frugal human being who doesn’t like to spend money on anything and almost considered it a point of pride. When I heard him say that, it made so much sense to me. John Cena had mentioned, not to me, he just said it, he got the bus, not because ‘I’m a superstar, I should be in a bus.’ He got it so he could sleep better because that was the only way he could continue doing what he does. I, in no way, shape, or form need a bus, but spending money on my body is something that I only recently, the last year and a half, two years, is something that I really invested in.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)