Bryan Danielson doesn't want to ever officially retire again.
Bryan Danielson is in his last full-time year as a professional wrestler, but he says he will never retire again. Danielson was forced into retirement in 2016 for two years as he could not be medically cleared by WWE's medical personnel.
Now, his goal is to help advance the younger stars and he's not concerned about winning championship belts.
"I don’t use the R-word [retirement]. I already had to do that once and I want to leave it open to wrestle when I’m 75 if I so choose," he said during a recent SXSW panel. "When I came to AEW, CM Punk had just debuted several weeks before and he talked about wanting to help the younger talent. I watched his interview and was like, ‘that's what I was going to say.’ Then, when they asked me my goals, I was like, ‘I’m going to come in and kick everyone’s head in. I don’t care about pushing younger guys to the top. I’m just going to stomp them in the face and show them I’m the best.’ That’s actually not the reality. As someone who is 42 years old and has two kids. AEW made the pro wrestling industry healthier. When I look at that, how do I make this industry that I’ve loved since I was a child, how do I make it healthier? The idea is to pass on my opinion to younger wrestlers. I’ve had people say, ‘Bryan, you should be champion.’ The reality is, to me, no.
"The champions that we’ve had have been great," he added. "Hangman was a great champion. MJF was a great champion. It elevated these younger people to where now these people are stars. You put Hangman and MJF on TV now and they draw a rating. It would be easy to take stars of the past and make them your champion and top guy. That’s the easy way. It’s much harder to take someone like MJF, who hadn’t been on national television, and turn him into a star that draws ratings. That was my bigger goal. To transfer stardom from one generation to another."
Just because he's not concerned about Championship matches, doesn't mean he isn't concerned about dream matches.
Danielson will face Katsuyori Shibata on the March 16th episode of AEW Saturday Collision. Learn more here.
If you use any of the quotes above, please credit the original source with a H/T and link back to Fightful for the transcription.
