Bryan Danielson Says He Has a Hard Time Internally With ‘Whole Concept’ Of Vince McMahon

Bryan Danielson finds it difficult to talk about Vince McMahon for a variety of reasons, as he noted in a recent podcast appearance. The semi-retired AEW star appeared on MJ In The Midday and during the conversation, he was asked about his time working for McMahon and more. McMahon, of course, is in the middle of a lawsuit filed by Janel Grant over alleged sexual assault and sex trafficking, which led to McMahon’s ousting from WWE and TKO. That lawsuit also included (until recently) John Laurinaitis, who was married to Danielson’s mother-in-law Kathy Colace until last year.,

You can see highlights from Danielson’s comments below, per Fightful:

On what it was like working for McMahon: “It had its ups and downs. I’m not going to answer too much of that. There is too much, honestly, click-baity headlines that could come out of that, but also, too many family things that are sensitive to my family specifically, because part of everything that has gone down involves my mother-in-law. I also have a very complicated thought process when it comes (to Vince).”

On if McMahon was a good boss: “As a boss, he has his good parts and bad parts. That’s everybody. It’s a really tough thing for me. I have a hard time — internally, I’m not even talking about it in public — internally, I have a hard time with the whole concept of Vince McMahon.”

On if he was grateful for his WWE push: “Absolutely. There’s the idea of ‘career’ and what he did for my career, and I consider that kind of a separate thing. When I’m looking at Vince McMahon, the human being, how he was to me when I was backstage, we’re also talking about a guy who, when my dad passed away, gave me the best hug I had ever gotten. I’m somebody who is not necessarily concerned with career advancement. Being a World Champion was never this thing I aspired to. I loved the fact that I could do this thing that I loved and make a living doing it. There is his treatment of me as an employee, but there was his treatment of me as a human being, and that’s the part that is hard to rectify with the things they are accusing him of. The way he treated me as a human, he treated me very well in a way that is kind of hard to describe to people if they are coming at you from a negative perspective of Vince McMahon. There are also negative aspects about Vince McMahon,” said Danielson.