Bryan Danielson on How It’s Hard for Him to Play an Underdog, the Scary Part of Signing With AEW

– During a recent edition of One Fall with Ron Funches, AEW star Bryan Danielson spoke about how it was difficult for him playing the underdog during his main event run in 2014 and more. Below are some highlights (via WrestlingInc.com):

Bryan Danielson playing the underdog in WWE: “They wanted me to be an underdog. It was hard for the fans a little bit too, I think to connect with somebody who is an underdog, who, at this point, had won the title multiple times … Married also this beautiful woman who’s got a reality TV show. I’m really not an underdog in life anymore, right?”

On it being easy to be an underdog against Brock Lesnar: “Against Brock Lesnar, it’s super easy to be an underdog. When you’re wrestling guys that aren’t that much bigger than you or anything like that — or people who, they may be bigger than you, but from what they’ve done in their career-wise, the fans would expect me to win as opposed to me being the underdog.”

On the scary part of signing with AEW: “The scary part of it was stepping outside of this comfort zone that I had in WWE. And also, in AEW, you see them doing some pretty risky things. I was like, I don’t know if physically I can do that anymore. Over the last year-plus, I’ve proven to myself that I can, which is kind of one of the things I was looking for as I was 40 then, I’m 41 now, to see if I can still do some of those things to physically test myself. A lot of people, my wife included, are like, ‘Why do you constantly desire to test yourself, to test your body’s capabilities?’ And I don’t know why I have that desire, but I do.”