Bryan Danielson On What He’d Like to Do Once He Retires, Having Interests Beyond Wrestling

Bryan Danielson isn’t sure what he wants to do once he retires from the ring, but he has no shortage of interests to potentially explore. Danielson, who previously said that he expects to have about a three-year run in AEW, spoke with Metro for a new interview and you can see a couple of highlights below:

On what he’d like to do once he retires: “I don’t know. Because it’s really hard for me to imagine being around wrestling and not wrestling. I think one of the things that I do like – I like doing the training. How to make people better, and all that stuff. But for me, the trade-off is the travel. If I was just training or I was just helping people get better at wrestling, would I really wanna do the travel? Because the travel is what I feel like the work is, right? Getting on the plane, being away from my kids, being away from my wife – that’s the work. The wrestling is never the work, the training people is never the work.

“So, if I wasn’t doing the part that brings me the absolute most joy – which is in the ring – would the work be worth it? That’s what I don’t know. When I was forced to retire and before they had me come in and be the GM, I was just focused on getting away from wrestling entirely because it hurt too much to be around it. I don’t know if it was a voluntary decision if that would be the same way. But I’m also interested in so many different things. It’s like, I feel like I could live a thousand different lives and never run out of things to be interested in.”

On having other interests he’d like to explore: “When people tell me that they’re bored, I just go, ‘How is that possible?!’ So, my daughter loves dinosaurs, right. I’m trying to learn more about dinosaurs so that I can teach her about dinosaurs. It’s endlessly fascinating, and there’s so much new stuff. There’s this book called the Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs that I read that was just blew my mind and all the things we don’t know. I could have easily seen myself being a paleontologist, going round the world looking for dinosaur bones.’ I don’t know that when I’m done wrestling if it would be just… do I wanna keep doing wrestling, or do I wanna pursue the 10 zillion things that are interesting on planet earth in this one life that I have to live?”