Back in 2020, WWE had to make some major adjustments due to the pandemic and WWE decided to create the Thunderdome which featured LED screens showing the faces of fans who were watching at home. The creation of the Thunderdome helped to bridge the gap between the wrestlers and the fans during a unique time, and it also gave WWE more control over the crowd noise.
Bryan Danielson was one of the key players in WWE during that time and he recently explained to Fightful that he pitched a big debut for Damian Priest. The former WWE Champion also claimed that he saw Vince McMahon turn down the crowd noise for certain wrestlers.
“But it’s like, ‘Oh, you could debut somebody.’ And, like, I had pitched this really hard, and we actually brought him up from, I think he was living in Tampa at the time. He was part of the developmental system … No, we were doing the Thunderdome in Tampa. He was living in Orlando. I thought, like, ‘Let’s debut Damian Priest right now. Let’s have him come in because he’s tall, he looks like a star, all this kind of stuff. Let’s debut him against Roman,’ and not in a match, but it’s like this thing.”
“And then let’s hit the — because I saw Vince do this, and it was really weird. He was like, ‘Okay, louder. I want the crowd noise louder for a certain wrestler. I want it louder.’ And then other guys were out there, he goes, ‘No, no, no. That’s too loud. Quieter.’ And I was like, ‘Why would you ever make it quieter?'”
Bryan Danielson last wrestled at the AEW WrestleDream pay-per-view in October of 2024 when he dropped the AEW World Championship to Jon Moxley. It’s not clear at this point in time if Bryan will ever wrestle again, but he recently joined the AEW commentary team full time.
H/T Wrestling Inc.