Bryan Danielson will be competing in his third AEW match tonight when he teams with Christian Cage and Jurassic Express to take on Kenny Omega, Adam Cole and The Young Bucks of The Elite. Danielson spoke with FITE on Focus ahead of the show and was asked about his goals for his AEW run. Danielson has described the three-year deal he just signed with the company as the “climax” of his career, but he admitted he doesn’t have many goals thanks to his notoriously low ambition.
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“One of my goals for myself, personally, is to become one of the best wrestlers that I can be, as far as keep improving in different aspects,” Danielson said (h/t Fightful) “A lot of these things, most fans will never notice, it’s just things that are particular to me or things that I enjoy. The other thing is to enjoy this experience of doing the thing that I love. I learned the hard way that…before I was forced to retire, it was like, you don’t respect it, in the sense that it can be taken away from you. Once you have that, it’s like, ‘Oh, okay, this can be taken away from me at literally any time,’ and it’s not up to my discretion. Anybody can get hurt on any given and it can just go away like that. Then, that becomes, rather than stressing about it or getting nervous before big matches, to enjoy those feelings. If you were to ask me was I nervous before the match with Kenny Omega, I was putting a lot of pressure on myself, it felt like the biggest match of my career. I didn’t feel nervous at all. I did feel the butterflies, but I was enjoying the butterflies and soaking in that. Where else in my life do I get those kinds of butterflies? There are so many people watching all over the world, not to mention the 20,000 people in the stadium. It’s the biggest show AEW has done, it’s my first match, and I have been watching to wrestle Kenny Omega for a long time. Where else are you going to feel those butterflies? Rather than be like, ‘Oh god, I’m nervous and stressed,’ to enjoy feeling that and being like, ‘this is what excitement feels like.’ That’s one of my goals, to enjoy this process. I feel I’ve done a good job since I’ve come back from retirement enjoying moments without the stress of it.”
He also talked about two things he absolutely wants to do while he’s still an active wrestler — work with MJF in AEW and compete in New Japan’s annual G1 Climax tournament.
“As far as, goals like, ‘I want to do this, I want to do that,’ I don’t have a lot of that. I would like to do…there are some people I would like to wrestle in AEW and obviously you want them to be incredible matches,” Danielson said. “I’d love to be able to go to New Japan and do the G1, but that’s COVID-dependent. I don’t hang anything on that. I would love to do something with MJF in AEW. If that doesn’t materialize and it never happens, it doesn’t matter as long as I enjoy the rest of the things.”
