AEW Referee Aubrey Edwards Recalls Becoming A Meme Due To Daniel Bryan Retirement Speech

AEW Unrestricted changed things up on a recent episode featuring co-host Aubrey Edwards as the "guest" on the podcast. Tony Schiavone and Edwards chatted about Edwards' career in the video game industry. She was in the industry full-time before signing full-time with AEW. She talked about how she was not a wrestling fan for most of her life, and she got into wrestling through her husband showing her the infamous CM Punk "pipebomb" promo.

"About a month or so later, there was the CM Punk 'pipebomb', and I came home from work and my husband's like, 'you have to see this.' So he shows me this clip, and it was at that moment that I realized that wrestling is just a form of storytelling because I'm watching this thing going, 'I don't know how much of this is real.' And that's really cool. That I don't know much about this character or this story, but I'm immediately invested," Edwards said. "And from that moment, I was hooked."

Edwards said that she dove deep into wrestling not only getting into WWE but also Ring of Honor and independent wrestling. She talked about how much wrestling consumed most of her life.

"I have the type of personality where if I'm into something, I'm into it 100 percent, so I started watching WWE. I'd start Googling all these wrestlers up. Oh, what's Ring of Honor? What are the independents? What's EVOLVE? Who's this guy? Then finding out all these other things, and then like WrestleMania 31, we went down to San Diego. 32, we went to Dallas. We went to Takeover: Brooklyn. I'm literally planning my family trips around Takeovers so I can justify going to New York. I went deep deep into it because I had so much to catch up on."

Bryan Danielson, more popularly known as Daniel Bryan, was one of the biggest stars of ROH, and Edwards said that he was one of her favorite wrestlers. Before he was cleared for an in-ring return, Bryan retired in his home-state of Washington. Edwards lives in Washington and attended that event and was caught on camera crying over Bryan's departure from the ring. She talked about becoming a meme that night and how fans now look back and notice her years later.

"There's a lot of characters that I got drawn to because I saw myself in them. My favorite wrestler is Daniel Bryan," Edwards said. "There's this really famous picture of me. So Daniel Bryan is from outside of Seattle. He's from Aberdeen. His retirement show, he was at the arena where the Sonics played, and I'm in the front row just bawling my eyes out. Like you can look up 'Daniel Bryan crying girl' online. My face comes up, and I'm just crying. It's pretty ridiculous when you become a meme because of your wrestling fandom. Years later, someone on Reddit was like, 'is that Aubrey Edwards?' Yeah, that's definitely me. I get invested dude. Those were real goddamn tears."

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit AEW Unrestricted with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.