AEW superstar Bryan Danielson recently appeared on the ABC6 in Philadelphia program to hype this week’s edition of Dynamite on TNT and discuss all things pro-wrestling, including how his match with Kenny Omega reminded him of his classic with Kofi Kingston at WrestleMania 35. Highlights are below.
Says Dynamite usually features more wrestling than Raw, SmackDown, and sometimes both combined:
This is one of the things that drew me to AEW; AEW is like a wrestling-first company. It’s a wrestling company for wrestling fans so if you’re a wrestling fan — and sometimes WWE is more just based on general entertainment. They wanna reach as many casual viewers as possible, where I think AEW is like, ‘Hey, if you love wrestling, here’s this’ but also, even if you’re not a wrestling fan, we’re putting on wrestling and the wrestling itself is gonna bring you in, you know what I mean? And I think that’s one of the really unique things about AEW. If you were to do a comparison of the two by just watching the shows, you’ll see that there’s a lot more wrestling in two hours of Dynamite than there is even in a three hour Raw and sometimes, there’s more wrestling on an AEW Dynamite show than there is on Raw and SmackDown combined. So that’s one of the things that drew me to it because as a fan, I mean when I was in high school, everybody loved The Rock and Steve Austin. They were my least favorite people because all they did was talk so I like the wrestler wrestlers.
Compares his match with Kenny Omega to his WrestleMania classic with Kofi Kingston:
So, one of the things that I think it — as I’m out there a lot of times and the crowd is going crazy and that [Danielson vs. Omega] was a very specific — I think — when you look back on favorite matches, it’s hard because there’s a recency bias but it feels like my favorite experience in a match. My favorite experience before might’ve been wrestling Kofi Kingston at WrestleMania. But I think that may have topped it. But one of the things that I think in these moments where fans are just super into something is that how lucky I am to be doing this thing that I love with this incredible reaction because — I haven’t talked to CM Punk about it in years, but CM Punk and I wrestled each other. I think it was like in 2004 or 2005 at this little promotion in Florida in front of 75 people and we wrestled for like 45 [minutes], right? So we’re out there in front of so few people and it’s so quiet and you can hear — you can just hear the people. The guys weren’t even talking, they weren’t even booing us. It’s a guy sitting in the front row, chatting to his friend and just goes, ‘These guys aren’t very good are they?’ The guy’s like, ‘No, not really.’ It’s not even booing. They’re just talking to each other but we can hear it. That’s such a deflating experience as opposed to having this experience where fans are just excited to see you tie up. So yeah. Gratitude is what it feels like.
(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling)