Danielson chats his decision to leave WWE, and CM Punk.
Within the time frame of two weeks, both CM Punk and Bryan Danielson arrived to All Elite Wrestling in 2021. They were not able to share the ring during their time together in the company.
Danielson was asked about that not coming to fruition as he was being interviewed by Inside The Ropes. He stated that it would have been really cool and fun for him to do so.
Sad isn’t the right word (about how I feel about not getting to work with CM Punk on-screen in AEW). It was something that I thought was gonna happen that didn’t happen. It would have been really cool and really fun for me.
Elsewhere in the conversation, Bryan further opened up about his decision to leave WWE for AEW. He expressed that there are things he wanted to do that could not be done in WWE and still cannot be done in the company.
He thinks he would have made the decision he did regardless of who was in charge of WWE at the time.
I hadn’t made up my mind. I was actually — everybody thinks of it as two options: AEW or WWE. Actually, I had three options — four options probably, actually. AEW, WWE, not wrestling at all which was seriously on the table and then also, not signing any contract and just doing, like, okay, if I wanna go do G1, I don’t have to ask anybody’s permission. I’ll just contact New Japan and say, hey! Can I do the G1? Contact Rocky Romero, can I go down and do Arena México? You know? All that kind of stuff. All of those were kind of on the table and things that I was thinking of. I don’t think much would have changed. The reason I left wasn’t because Vince (McMahon) was in charge or because I wasn’t happy with the WWE product or anything like that. There were just some things I wanted to do. Some of the things that I wanted to do, you just can’t do in WWE, and you still can’t, right? And they’re not things that are like, oh, WWE doesn’t do this so, yeah, they suck or whatever it is. No, they’re just logistical that they can’t allow anymore because of some of the things that they do and so, yeah, there’s just some things I wanted to do. I enjoyed my time there, but yeah, I think regardless of who was in charge, I think I would have made this decision at the end.
Present-day, Danielson is the reigning AEW World Champion. He won the title from Swerve Strickland at All In.
Punk is in the midst of a feud with Drew McIntyre and their next chapter will see them inside Hell in a Cell at WWE Bad Blood.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Inside The Ropes with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
