Bryan Danielson has had the chance to work for both Vince McMahon and Tony Khan as both a wrestler and a behind-the-scenes in creative.
Rivalry
Before jumping to AEW in 2021, Danielson had branched off to being part of the WWE creative team in the previous years. When AEW launched in 2019, WWE tried various ways to hurt the growth of the rival promotion, including putting NXT head-to-head with Dynamite.
While speaking on an SXSW panel, Danielson was asked the question of what AEW could do to reach the next level. He said that the idea is you can’t make big changes to the program because it’s already successful.
Comparisons
“This is what we were talking about in WWE. Vince McMahon actually called me one night. I was part of WWE creative, and he called me one night and said, ‘What is AEW doing that we’re not doing?’ I went back and watched eight straight weeks of TV within the span of six days and was like, ‘There is a whole list of things.’ What you don’t want to do in getting to the next level is to change the things that are already working because there are so many things already working. Then, it’s experimenting with different things.”
Danielson will wrestle Will Ospreay in a dream match at AEW Dynasty next month on pay-per-view.
H/T to Fightful for the transcription
