AEW Superstar Bryan Danielson recently spoke with Muscle & Fitness about his longer matches in AEW, Brie Bella appearing in the 2022 Women’s WWE Royal Rumble match, and more. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On his lengthy matches in AEW: “A lot of the world, right now, is transforming into short attention span type stuff. I’m trying, in my own personal life, to expand my attention span. One of the things that has always interested me in wrestling, is the long form, right? You know, I’ve been doing short form for so long with WWE. The TV matches are usually around three minutes but very rarely much longer than 10. I’ve been very interested in long-form story telling for a while.”
On whether he was nervous about the matches: “The first one, against Kenny Omega, there was a little bit of nervousness there. It was just because, in my own mind, I had put it on a pedestal because this was my first match outside of WWE in over 10 years. This was kind of a statement, as far as what I want the next three years of my career to be. Also, I’d been looking forward to wrestling Kenny for a long time. The reality is that I was a little bit nervous before, but then once the music started playing and I went out there, it was just pure joy.”
On keeping himself in shape: “I’m very lucky in the sense that cardio has always been one of my strengths. It’s always been very difficult for me to put on muscle but cardio vascularly, I never get tired. I can recall twice in my entire career in which I was tired [laughs]. And both of those are because I put on too much muscle. One example was in 2003 when I got up to 210-pounds and I looked great, but I did a 40-minute match with Paul London, it was two-out-of-three falls, and 30 minutes in I was like, ‘My legs are tired! What is this?’”
On if he would be interested in wrestling over an hour for AEW: “After the match, backstage, the trainer was like ‘are you tired?’ I was like, ‘Hell no! I’m not tired’ and then I dropped and did five burpees just to prove it [laughs] … I’d be interested to know, how long, cardiovascular-wise I could go, before it’s like, ‘OK, that’s it! I’m done!’”
On Brie Bella returning at the Royal Rumble: “I’m very excited. Mostly, I’m excited because Brie is excited, right? Whenever you love somebody, and they are doing something that makes them happy, or makes them excited, you are excited and happy for them.”