Pro wrestling veteran and AEW star Bryan Danielson appeared on the Kairouz Bros podcast to discuss various topics, including his confusion about WWE’s counter-programming against AEW and his desire to understand their reasoning.
Danielson said, “I’m just curious, like, what the people who are making these decisions, what they’re thinking, right? In the sense of like, ‘Oh okay, this AEW thing, it’s a real danger to our billion-dollar business.’ That can’t be it. AEW existing and being this challenger brand, and being as successful as we’ve been, has changed the landscape for wrestling, for the wrestlers themselves. Wrestlers are being paid more now than ever from a sports rights perspective. So, for example, in most major sports in the United States, the players get anywhere between 40 to 50% of the revenue. WWE was paying their wrestlers nowhere close to that. Now, keep in mind, they’re still not paying anywhere close to that, but they do have to pay more, because if they don’t, the talent is going to leave and go to AEW. AEW does pay that 40 to 50% of their revenue to their wrestlers, you know, despite making much less money. I mean we still, our TV rights deal was incredible, but we’re still the challenger brand catching up on however many years WWE has.”
On AEW’s value as a challenger brand to WWE:
“It’s interesting because we’re, we’re not at the point of being a threat. It’s one of the things that people who really crave power and a lot of money play these weird games that I don’t understand,” he said. “I don’t understand, it’s like, ‘Okay, we’re gonna run all the competitors that might be competitive with us out of this business.’ Why? It’s good. It’s good for the wrestlers. It’s good for the wrestlers, both in AEW and in WWE, it’s good for them. If AEW wouldn’t have started, would Cody Rhodes be where he is right now? No, they have a megastar because AEW exists. Would CM Punk ever have come back? Probably not.
I would be really interested, and I’m not saying this in the sense of like, ‘Oh, those evil people. Because when you think of corporations, they are not people, right? In the United States, I don’t know if it’s like this in Australia, but corporations have been determined as like, legally as people, they have the same rights as people. It’s just like, ‘Wait, what?’ But they’re not people, right? So that these corporations make these decisions, but the people in WWE, a lot of people I know, are great people, right? So it’s like, I’d be interested to know, okay, what’s the decision-making process in this?”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to Fightful for transcribing the above quotes)
