Drew Gulak Shares Story About First Time He Stepped In The Ring With Bryan Danielson

In an appearance on The Wrestling Classic's Casual Conversations, WWE star Drew Gulak talked about AEW star Bryan Danielson, who he worked with in WWE when Danielson worked under the name Daniel Bryan. Needless to say, Drew Gulak had a blast working with Danielson, even prior to them getting in the ring together.

"It was great working with him," Gulak said. "The first time I met him was at the Cruiserweight Classic. He was doing commentary at the time, he wasn't wrestling, he was injured. He was still retired and then he became the General Manager for a little bit and we, I don't know, we would just talk backstage about things and, you know, we never were like 'man, we should wrestle one day.' But it was just like, we had a common, you know, interest in all of that. So we would talk about that and all the stuff that he's interested in and I'm interested in, and we would share just kind of stories and stuff.

"A fun story that I'm going to share is the day before he wrestled at WrestleMania. It was him and Shane McMahon versus Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens. So the day before, he was getting ready for that match, he had never been in the ring since he was injured. He asked me to come down to the practice ring and train with him for like an hour or two. That's the first time I actually got in the ring with him. But it's just kind of like, really cool that later we'd get to be this kind of team on TV, and he had the concept of me being his trainer, which is the flip side of what you would expect, him being experienced. So yeah, that's a really fun, little full-circle moment. Getting to work with him is awesome. He's a great wrestler and I wish we could do it again."

Drew Gulak then reminisced on the matches he had with Danielson in WWE, including one they had in Gulak's hometown of Philadelphia. Despite the importance of that match, he felt their match in a tournament for the Intercontinental Championship was even better due to it mostly being based in pure wrestling.

"Philadelphia which is my hometown, a very important town for Bryan," Gulak said. "He used to live there too and wrestle there quite a bit, of course. So to have that match there was cool, but it was our first time ever really having a match, so like, you're still trying to feel each other out. It's never going to be super cohesive all the time, which can make for an awesome, exciting story. Some moments in that match that did happen were because of that. But then, I feel like our match in that Intercontinental tournament was maybe even more enjoyable for different reasons.

"In that match, we did not touch the ropes at all, we didn't kick each other, we didn't do any striking, it was just all grappling and it was really just pure wrestling. To do that on a Smackdown is like, really kind of like, you never see anything like that and that was really fun. And business-wise, there's a lot of stuff going on at that time. It was really special for me to kind of get there, getting there with him. But that was the — it, was the only two times we've ever linked up."

You can watch the full interview below.

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Casual Conversations and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription