Bryan Danielson spent many years working in WWE as Daniel Bryan, and eventually he became one of the top stars in the company. WWE is known for being a company that likes their talent to recite scripted promos, but over time Bryan earned himself some leeway.
While speaking with Jimmy Traina on the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast the former WWE Champion noted that after he joined AEW he was surprised when Tony Khan asked him what he wanted to do before his first promo with the company.
Bryan then went on to talk about his time working in WWE, and he explained that he actually enjoyed the process of collaborating with the WWE creative team.
“I was never handed a sheet of paper or told what we’re doing. We kind of sit down and decide what we’re doing. I was like, ‘Oh.’ Then there’s this overachieving fear for me a little bit because some people don’t like working with the writers. I love working with writers. I like collaborating. I had a really good time with that. One of my favorite times was when I was the Planet’s Champion. The writer I worked with was named Robert. We had so much fun. He would present me with a piece of paper. I had a lot more leeway than a lot of people in WWE. I would work with the writer and say, ‘what if we say this?’ Robert was great because he would pull me back from the edge, sometimes I’d go off on a tangent and he would say, ‘Hey, this is too far environmental and maybe not focused enough on the show we’re actually doing.’ Robert helped me stay on track. Eventually, I wasn’t allowed to say anything about the environment at all, but Robert was great because he would throw in little things there. I loved collaborating with the writers. There’s a real fear of the blank page. You have to craft your own story. You want that freedom, but then all of sudden it’s like, ‘Oh no, here is this blank page, you can create whatever you want’ and you’re like, ‘Uhhh,’ and that’s a little bit nerve-wracking.”
“My last couple of months with WWE, I would get scripts, but my time with WWE was pretty much that; always working with a writer but always collaborating. In the last couple of months, I was part of the creative team a little bit. Very rarely would I do my own stuff, but I was like, ‘What if I said something like this?’ I might have said that on a Tuesday then show up on Friday and it would be somebody else’s words, but a version of what I mentioned. We’d flesh it out, work together, and it’d be fun.”
Bryan Danielson made his in-ring debut for AEW during the special episode of Dynamite Grand Slam on Wednesday night, and he faced off against Kenny Omega in a match that ended in a draw.
H/T Fightful
