During his latest interview with FITE in Focus AEW superstar Bryan Danielson spoke about his desire to compete in NJPW’s G1 Climax tournament, as well as other goals he has for himself. Highlights from the interview are below.
Says he doesn’t feel like there is anything else for him to accomplish in wrestling:
“No, I don’t have that kind of ambition. My ambition is completely different than a lot of ambition … One of my goals for myself, personally, is to become one of the best wrestlers that I can be, as far as keep improving in different aspects. A lot of these things, most fans will never notice, it’s just things that are particular to me or things that I enjoy. The other thing is to enjoy this experience of doing the thing that I love. I learned the hard way that…before I was forced to retire, it was like, you don’t respect it, in the sense that it can be taken away from you. Once you have that, it’s like, ‘Oh, okay, this can be taken away from me at literally any time,’ and it’s not up to my discretion. Anybody can get hurt on any given and it can just go away like that. Then, that becomes, rather than stressing about it or getting nervous before big matches, to enjoy those feelings.”
Why he wasn’t nervous prior to his match with Kenny Omega:
“If you were to ask me was I nervous before the match with Kenny Omega, I was putting a lot of pressure on myself, it felt like the biggest match of my career. I didn’t feel nervous at all. I did feel the butterflies, but I was enjoying the butterflies and soaking in that. Where else in my life do I get those kinds of butterflies? There are so many people watching all over the world, not to mention the 20,000 people in the stadium. It’s the biggest show AEW has done, it’s my first match, and I have been watching to wrestle Kenny Omega for a long time. Where else are you going to feel those butterflies? Rather than be like, ‘Oh god, I’m nervous and stressed,’ to enjoy feeling that and being like, ‘this is what excitement feels like.’ That’s one of my goals, to enjoy this process. I feel I’ve done a good job since I’ve come back from retirement enjoying moments without the stress of it. I trained with Shawn Michaels and ne of the things he said to us is, ‘The moment you go out there and stop feeling nervous is the moment you need to retire.’ I’ve found that, I actually had to retire to come back and not feel that nervousness and it’s made it a more joyful experience.”
Still has a desire to compete in the G1 Climax:
“As far as, goals like, ‘I want to do this, I want to do that,’ I don’t have a lot of that. I would like to do…there are some people I would like to wrestle in AEW and obviously you want them to be incredible matches. I’d love to be able to go to New Japan and do the G1, but that’s COVID-dependent. I don’t hang anything on that. I would love to do something with MJF in AEW. If that doesn’t materialize and it never happens, it doesn’t matter as long as I enjoy the rest of the things.”
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)