Bryan Danielson On Going From The WrestleMania Main Event To AEW's Biggest Dynamite

Bryan Danielson recently spoke with The New York Post's Joseph Staszewski to promote his AEW in-ring debut on tonight's Grand Slam edition of AEW Dynamite on TNT. Danielson will face AEW World Champion Kenny Omega in a non-title match.

Danielson was asked if he likes the idea of getting the dream match with Omega right out of the gate. Danielson revealed how he wanted his debut to go this way, and how he wanted his first match to be a big deal. He noted that there is no bigger deal than Danielson vs. Omega right now.

"This is kind of one of my ideas I came in with is doing this right away," Danielson revealed. "The idea came from when I came back from my retirement (in 2018) there were a lot of matches in WWE people wanted to see and we either took a long time to get to them or even didn't get to them at all and I think we lost some of the momentum when fans were excited about me coming back from my retirement. And at the time I felt yeah, build to these matches, build to these matches.

"I think with so many exciting people coming into AEW you can build to a CM Punk-Kenny Omega match. You can build to some of those matches, but I also think fans want to see something right away to get them super excited. To be fair, I want my first match in AEW to feel like a big deal. So there is no bigger deal than me versus Kenny Omega right now."

One of Danielson's final WWE matches was the WrestleMania 37 main event back in April, which was a Triple Threat match with WWE Hall of Famer Edge and the winner, WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns. He was asked if it's hit him that he was in the WrestleMania main event a few months ago, and now he's debuting on what looks to be the biggest Dynamite ever. Danielson talked about how this feels like the biggest match of his career, and how he's been looking forward to the match for years.

"It doesn't hit me like that," Danielson said. "The WrestleMania part at least doesn't. It's weird though because it literally feels like the biggest match of my career (Wednesday) because of the jump. It's my first match in AEW. Because it's Arthur Ashe Stadium, because I think a lot of people are going to be watching it and maybe trying out AEW for the first time and if we give them something great, I hope they stick around. On the converse side (laughs), if it really bombs and it really sucks, it's gonna be, 'We don't want to watch this show.'

"I have also been looking forward to wrestling Kenny for years. As I was in WWE I thought it was a match that actually would never happen. But when Kenny and I wrestled before he didn't have that much of a name on the independent scene and hadn't done all the stuff he did in Japan. As that was happening and I was in WWE I was like, 'Whoa, I would love to wrestle this guy.'"