Bryan Danielson has hit the ground running since leaving WWE and debuting in All Elite Wrestling, delivering some dream match-ups already with one more against Jon Moxley on the way at Revolution. WWE and AEW are quite different in their approaches to the wrestling business and entertainment, but there are things to be learned from both, and Danielson knows this quite well. During a recent episode of The Masked Man Show, Danielson revealed some key advice he received from WWE’s Vince McMahon and AEW’s Tony Khan, and first up was McMahon, who gave him this piece of advice early on before the two were close.
Videos by ComicBook.com
“I try to be very conscious of things because of my respect for Vince and things he would want me to say and things he wouldn’t want me to say,” Danielson said. “One of the things he first taught me, and this was before I was close with him, was the ability to use silence and to not say something if you don’t have an answer. If somebody asks you a question, ‘well, maybe we could do…’ and you put out maybe not even your best answer. You could just say, ‘Hmmm, let me think about it.’ Sometimes when you talk to him and ask him a question, he’ll sit there and not say a word for 30 seconds or longer, which feels like the longest time in history, but he’s not going to give you a bad answer. He’s not going to give you an off-the-cuff answer.”
“The ability to sit and wait and be patient enough, and even if you don’t come up with it, you get, ‘okay, let me think about that.’ That was one of the earliest lessons I learned from him, but there is no trepidation in the back of my mind that he wouldn’t want me to say that [laughs],” Danielson said.
As for Khan, it is in regards to changing up how he approaches some things in wrestling because of his time in WWE. It makes sense though, as he wrestled there for the past 11 years.
“As far as Tony, the things that I’ve learned…I don’t remember exactly what it was, but Danielson said, ‘I think we’re gonna have to spend some time to get that notion out of your head,’ which was a very WWE notion of how wrestling is. I was like, ‘Oh, yeah,’ you have to keep in mind, I was with WWE for 11 years. I thought of myself as very open-minded and outside the box, ‘oh no, that is very WWE thinking, that thing you thought.’ That was one instance.”
We really want to know what exactly they were referring to in that discussion, but Danielson didn’t go into detail on what they were actually talking about in that instance.
Danielson will next take on Moxley at Revolution, which takes place on March 6th at 7 PM CST on FITE TV.
What do you think of McMahon and Khan’s advice? Let us know in the comments or as always you can talk all things wrestling with me on Twitter @MattAguilarCB!
H/T Fightful