After weeks of rumors Bryan Danielson finally made his AEW debut at the All Out pay-per-view earlier this month, and he made his in-ring debut with AEW on Wednesday when he faced off against Kenny Omega on Dynamite.
The former World Champion recently spoke to Sports Illustrated about his run with WWE, and he noted that he had a good relationship with Vince McMahon, but Vince was protective of him, and the belief in WWE was that Bryan was injury prone.
“I think their story of me, which they believe is that I’m injury-prone, but the reality is I’ve been wrestling for 21 years,” Danielson noted. “I’ve had one surgery, which was my neck surgery, which I was out for nine months, and then I was forced to retire due to multiple concussions, but all the concussion doctors cleared and that was concussions over the span of, at that point, 15 plus years.
“I haven’t had that many injuries, and I’m really durable, especially when you compare me to say, Triple H or John Cena, or all these other people. I haven’t had any problems with my knees or anything like that. All that said, Vince is very protective of me in almost a fatherly type way. I was wrestling Drew Gulak at the Elimination Chamber PPV, right before the pandemic started in 2020.
Bryan Danielson also noted that Vince McMahon got mad at him after he took a German suplex during his match with Drew Gulak at Elimination Chamber in 2020.
“I took a German suplex that went a little bit wrong, and I landed on my head. When I got to the back, Vince was so mad at me. It wasn’t anything about the performance. After he got mad at me, I said, ‘Was the match okay?’ And he goes, ‘Yeah, the match was great, but you can’t do that.’ He didn’t want me to get hurt. You don’t want your boss to be mad at you, but I saw this coming from a very loving perspective.”
H/T Wrestling Inc.
