Bryan Danielson Talks Vince McMahon Being Overprotective, How He Wants To Push His Limits In AEW

Last night AEW held their annual ALL OUT pay per view, which featured a number of surprise debuts including Adam Cole, Ruby Soho, Minoru Suzuki, and finally Bryan Danielson, who received a heroes welcome from the wild Chicago crowd. The American Dragon participated in the post-show media scrum to talk about his arrival in the promotion, which you can read in the highlights below.

ON whether he felt a spark return during his debut, and how meditating helped keep focused:

Yeah, for sure. You know, it was interesting, but for the first time in a really long time, Tony put me in a trailer. I was hiding in the trailer. So I had to go back to the trailer after and then, you know, I talked to my wife and everything. Then I was sitting there and just kind of meditating after and you can just feel it. So many times we just like bypass cool things. I kept sitting there. I don’t know how many of you meditate? I know, it’s bullshit mood stuff or whatever. But, just feeling the sensation of it, it still resonated. That’s one of the very unique things about pro wrestling, is that you go out there and you can feel — For the most part, most of my career, almost every time I’ve gotten out there and really felt something, and tonight it was a feeling that wouldn’t stop until they came and got me out of the trailer. Then you disconnect from it and you’re just like, Oh, where am I going?

Says like Punk, the Brodie Lee tribute show was very special to him:

So I heard something over the past week that one of the things that really turned Punk was the Brodie Lee show. It was also one of the things — I saw it and so many of us loved him so much and so we saw it and saw how special it was and we saw, like okay, we’re gonna stop what we’re normally doing. I thought that was really special to me.

Says he has a great relationship with Vince McMahon but he is overprotective:

So that was when I really started kind of thinking about my contract coming up. But the final decision, honestly, was just like, I started thinking about things — WWE was so gracious with me as far as the offer that they gave me. They were gonna let me go do some other stuff on the outside, but, I hate to say this, Vince sometimes — He and I have a great relationship. I love him, I do. Sometimes he’s overprotective of me. I want to be able to push my limits. That’s one of the things that I love about this, is like the physicality of what we do out there and being able to push my limits and being able to do that here in a safe manner is one of the things that really drew me here.

Says there is an excitement in the AEW product that is unmatched:

Then there’s also, I just think there’s an excitement, you know what I mean? There’s just an excitement. You see the crowd. I mean I think you all see it, probably were all out there and you felt it. You felt how excited people are about this product and it feels vibrant. Even just watching it through a TV screen in a trailer. I’m sitting there going, ‘God this is awesome. I want to be a part of this.’ So that was it. Although it was — I don’t know, I really battled back and forth because there’s a lot of people there that I consider family, that actually are legitimately my family, and you know, people that I love there so it was a really tough decision.

(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)