During a recent interview with Sports Illustrated, Bryan Danielson commented on this year being his final one where he’ll be a full-time wrestler and why he doesn’t want to be in a world title position on his way out.
You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On facing Shingo Takagi at Forbidden Door: “What really excites me about this is how much we’ve both developed as wrestlers since then 2010. If you go through what Shingo has done since leaving Dragon Gate, he went to NJPW, the biggest company in Japan, he won the IWGP junior championship, and then he moved to heavyweight and won the IWGP heavyweight championship. When he’s wrestling, I’m watching.”
On not wanting to be champion: “I don’t want to be in that [world champion] position–I don’t feel like that’s my position anymore, The quality of wrestling in AEW is so high, it’s really hard to main-event pay-per-views. That’s not something my body can really do anymore. I know there are a percentage of fans who would like that, but I don’t think it’s my place. And here’s the truth: I don’t want anything to do creatively with my own stuff. I also don’t know where people get the notion that I do. It’s very hard in wrestling to be objective about yourself, so I leave that in the hands of other people. That was the same thing in WWE, even when I was part of the creative team. The head writer of SmackDown at the time, Ryan Callahan, asked me what I wanted to do, and I remember saying I didn’t want to talk about what I wanted to do. I don’t think you can be objective about that stuff.”
On why he likes tournaments: “The thing I love about tournaments is it’s a real sports-like presentation. That’s my favorite style to watch and to do. Tournaments are really conducive to that.”
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