Drew Gulak Recalls Bryan Danielson Fighting To Get Their Match Booked For PPV

Drew Gulak wrestled Bryan Danielson at the 2020 WWE Elimination Chamber PPV, which may not have happened if Danielson didn’t fight for it. In an interview with the Grue Rume Show (via Fightful), Gulak spoke about how Danielson pushed to get their match on the card.

He said: “I worked with him briefly when he made his return to in-ring competition from his neck surgery. I got to be the medical coach. Kind of, like, in the ring working with him to get him ready for that match the day before. So that was an honor, and I didn’t know that it would turn into him wanting to, like, be in a tag team with me so, you know, 205 Live came and then it moved to NXT and then they decided to go in a different direction with the Cruiserweight Championship. I happened to be moved to SmackDown. We were sharing locker rooms together, so he kind of crafted this story where maybe he coaches me or maybe he sees some holes in my game and we just kind of flubbed this thing and it came together and you know. It turned into the match at Elimination Chamber in Philly by coincidence. He pushed really hard to get us on the card and then, pushed really hard to get us on the main show, and we did our thing and the cool thing about, you know, wrestling the technical style and trying to focus on the realism and the drama from what a match is as opposed to just your storyline on top of it — which seems to be most of what the mainstream wrestling does — it always hooks people. Once you establish what the stakes are in the ring and you teach people how the drama of a match makes sense, it’s really fun to watch. It really becomes like a fun thing. It’s not even that it’s a sport. You can really see the artform evolve and thank goodness, he’s on that same wavelength too and really wanted to do that and we went out there and had our match and everyone was very happy with it. There was the German suplex spot that scared the crap out of Vince (McMahon). But, Bryan was fine, he was perfectly fine. Thank goodness and we actually used that as a part to enhance the match, and then we started working backstage and we were gonna become this tag team on the road and then literally, the pandemic happened right after that so we took the act to the ThunderDome and had a really good run there. I had some contract issues where my contract actually expired during then. So they wrote me off TV for like, not even half a week. Brought me back within — we went right back to the act, and then he had to go away with his family not too long after that so, I mean, I got a WrestleMania appearance out of it so I can’t complain. I got to lace ‘em up next to Bryan Danielson for a good amount of time.”