AEW superstar Bryan Danielson recently appeared on the Casual Conversations podcast to discuss a number of pro-wrestling related topics, including how the Brodie Lee Tribute show helped him to decide to make the jump to AEW, and how WWE would have allowed him to work New Japan shows. Highlights from the interview are below.
Says the Brodie Lee tribute show and watching Zack Sabre Jr. made him want to jump ship from WWE:
“So it wasn’t, it’s not necessarily a moment or anything like that although I was particularly moved like many people were by the AEW tribute show of Brodie Lee. He was a good friend of mine and to me they went above and beyond, especially for his son you know what I mean, for his wife and all that kind of stuff. That really touched my heart and so there was that but also I watched a lot of Zack Sabre Jr, I like him a lot. I think he’s my favorite wrestler to watch, I think because before I started in WWE I was doing some very technical wrestling with combining different submissions. Then I watched Zack wrestle more and more and he was just like woah… he was just blowing away the things that I thought was really cool.”
How WWE would have let him do shows in New Japan:
“Well so WWE would have let me do some shows in New Japan, I don’t know how much but I mean. It’s interesting because given the pandemic in the way it is now it’s not really urgent and humans like myself included aren’t great at looking at the long-term picture of things. I was like in 18 months I’ll be able to go to Japan and wrestle in New Japan when the pandemic is over but I’m mostly thinking like okay what does my next week look like or whatever. Both sides I probably would’ve been able to wrestle in Japan but then there’s this idea of spending more time at home with my kids. Although it was a very difficult decision there were times that I at different points was going one way or the other you know what I mean.”
Says he wanted to face off with Jey Uso at WrestleMania 37 and put him over:
“I knew for sure what I was going to do contract wise, but I knew I was going to be taking some time off. When my contract expired, it was the last day of April. I was like okay even If I come back I should do something where I wrestle somebody else and kind of put them over at Wrestlemania. I thought Jey Uso would’ve been a great choice for that but you know somebody else in that vein. So that was my thinking going out.”
(Thanks to Casual Conversations for sending us quotes)
