WWE attempted to establish an outside partnership so Bryan would stay.
It has been one month since Bryan Danielson arrived in All Elite Wrestling and next on the docket for him is the first round of the AEW World Title Eliminator tournament in-which he’ll be taking on Dustin Rhodes. Bryan recently faced Minoru Suzuki and Bobby Fish and he was victorious in both.
Prior to Bryan joining AEW, he was still contemplating if he should leave or stay with WWE. This past May, it was noted in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that WWE and New Japan Pro-Wrestling had conversations about a potential partnership. Danielson told the ‘In The Kliq’ show that he does not know how far the conversations went, but WWE did attempt to come up with an agreement so he could work in Japan while still being under contract to them.
Well so I don’t know how far along the talks went but, and I don’t know even if I was the start of them for sure but one of the things when I was talking to them when they were — when WWE was trying to re-sign me was I said I wanna be able to go work in Japan and so they were trying to come up with an agreement to where I would be able to go and do that and that sort of thing and so yeah, that was definitely something that was talked about. I don’t know where it went or anything like that. All I know is that now it seems like AEW has a really great relationship with New Japan. So I feel like it couldn’t have gone that well [Bryan laughed].
Bryan went on to speak about the physical style he is able to work in AEW. He said WWE always wanted him to be the underdog in matches but now, he can do what he likes.
I love smash mouth wrestling and that’s what I wanna do in AEW, you know what I mean? For years in WWE, I was portrayed as the underdog and they wanted me to wrestle kind of a certain style and that sort of thing but now, I can just kind of do what I’d like to do and wrestle with a certain — a higher degree of physicality and I think that scares some people. But you know, that’s one of the things that I enjoy about wrestling the most is the physicality of it, you know what I mean? And so, that’s something that I really enjoy.
The aforementioned AEW World Title Eliminator tournament kicks off on this week’s Rampage. If Danielson advances, he’ll either meet Eddie Kingston or Lance Archer in the semifinals.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit ‘In The Kliq’ with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
