The Surprising AEW Question Vince McMahon Had For Bryan Danielson
Bryan Danielson is a leading figure wherever he goes and during his time on WWE’s creative team, Vince McMahon hit him with a surprising question about AEW.
Tony Khan launched AEW in 2019 with Cody Rhodes, Kenny Omega, and The Young Bucks as the centre pieces of his company. Since its inception, AEW has been a disruptor finding success for a US company that is not WWE since the heyday of WCW.
While AEW has been able to sell over 81,000 tickets to Wembley Stadium, claiming the record for the biggest ticket-selling wrestling show in history, in recent months ticket sales have been sluggish for many of Tony Khan’s shows. That has led many to wonder what AEW needs to do to arrest that particular slide.
Vince McMahon Had Questions For Bryan Danielson About AEW
When asked at a panel at SXSW about what AEW needs to do to get to the next level, Bryan Danielson revealed that Vince McMahon had once asked him about AEW’s success and what Tony Khan’s company was doing that his was not:
If you look at Dynamite and look at ‘where can we make improvements to gain an audience here or to touch people to a different level. The idea is you can’t make big changes because Dynamite is already successful. This is what we were talking about in WWE.
Vince McMahon actually called me one night, I was part of WWE creative, and he called me one night and said, ‘What is AEW doing that we’re not doing?’ I went back and watched eight straight weeks of TV within the span of six days and was like, ‘there is a whole list of things.’
What you don’t want to do, in getting to the next level, is to change the things that are already working because there are so many things already working. Then, it’s experimenting with different things.
Bryan Danielson brought his time in WWE to an end in 2021 before debuting for AEW in a huge moment at the end of All Out in the same year. Bryan Danielson will be part of a wrestling dream match at AEW Dynasty on April 21st as he winds down his full-time wrestling career.