AEW's Bryan Danielson: WWE Thought I Was Injury-Prone

Following his All Elite Wrestling debut at All Out, Bryan Danielson noted that one of the reasons he signed with the promotion was because WWE Chairman Vince McMahon was "overprotective" of him. Danielson instead wanted to be able to push his limits during his final years as a full-time performer and The American Dragon believed he would be able to do so in AEW. 

Danielson made his AEW in-ring debut on the September 22 Dynamite: Grand Slam show against Kenny Omega and Bryan revealed ahead of the match to the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast that WWE thought he was injury-prone.

"Their story of me, which they believe, is that I'm injury-prone... The reality is that I've been wrestling for 21 years, I've had one surgery, which was my neck surgery, which I was out for nine months. And then I was forced to retire due to multiple concussions but all of the concussion doctors had cleared me and that was concussions over the span of, at that point, 15 plus years. So I haven't had that many injuries and I'm really durable, especially when you compare me to say Triple H or John Cena or all these other people. Like, 'Hey, I haven't had any problems with my knees or anything like that,'" Danielson stated. 

Danielson then detailed McMahon being "very protective" of him in a "loving" way at Elimination Chamber 2020, when the former WWE Champion landed on his head following a botched German Suplex during his match with Drew Gulak. 

"All of that said, Vince is very protective of me in almost like a fatherly-type way. I was wrestling Drew Gulak at the Elimination Chamber pay-per-view right before the pandemic started in 2020. I took a German Suplex that went a little bit wrong and I landed on my head. When I got to the back, Vince was so mad at me and it wasn't anything about the performance. After he got mad at me, I said, 'Was the match okay?' And he goes, 'Yeah, the match was great, but you can't do that.' He didn't want me to get hurt and you don't want your boss to be mad at you, but I saw it as coming from a very loving perspective," Danielson added.