Bryan Danielson – “Tony Khan Might Be The Smartest Wrestling Mind I’ve Ever Seen”
Bryan Danielson explains why Tony Khan may be the smartest wrestling booker he’s ever worked with.
Throughout his decades-long career in the world of professional wrestling, Bryan Danielson has worked with a number of high-level wrestling promoters, including Vince McMahon, Gabe Sapolsky, and Tony Khan.
When asked about his experience working with different promoters during an interview with Mike Johnson of PWInsider, Bryan Danielson heaped praise on his current employer, calling Tony Khan one of the smartest wrestling minds in the business.
“So I think from a purely wrestling booking standpoint, Tony might be the smartest wrestling mind I’ve ever seen. And what I mean by that is his… So he does most of the rest of AEW’s booking on his own, right? He’ll reach out to talent to get their feedback or their ideas or whatever it is and sometimes he’ll run ideas by me.”
Bryan Danielson Compared Tony Khan’s Booking To Working With Writers In WWE
Continuing, Bryan Danielson pointed out unlike WWE having a staff of writers, Tony Khan books the majority of AEW programming himself.
“But most of these things that are coming across on this show, most of these are Tony’s ideas, right, versus the time I was in WWE, you have a crew of 30 writers coming up with ideas who are then pitching them to say Vince or whatever it is and then he gets to pick and choose or come up with his own idea, right? It’s different than facing the blank page.
“Now Gabe Sapolsky was a little bit different, right? I don’t know how many shows we would do a year at Ring of Honor, but say we did 40 shows a year at Ring of Honor, doing 42 DVD products a year is different from doing five hours of television every week and doing it mostly on your own. The idea that he’s still doing that and doing it mostly on his own with input from other people, I mean, hey, nobody exists in a vacuum, right?”
Finally, Danielson praised Tony Khan’s memory and recall skills as well as the AEW President’s love for wrestling.
“But it’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen in the sense of his recall. His recall and his memory is incredible for the things that we’ve done on the show, nothing… I don’t want to say nothing. Very few things get forgotten. You know what I mean? And his ability to recall those things is really impressive.
“And obviously, and this is one of the things that I think me and so many other people in AEW love about Tony is that it’s very apparent how much he loves pro wrestling. Still after now coming up on four years of running this wild, crazy pro wrestling show, he loves wrestling still.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Bryan Danielson revealed why he doesn’t want to main event any more AEW pay-per-views.