During a recent interview with Pwinsider, Brian Pillman Jr. commented on his segment with MJF on Wednesday’s episode AEW Dynamite, Bryan Danielson and Adam Cole coming to AEW, and more. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On his segment with MJF on AEW Dynamite and a rivalry being formed between the two: “When you’re talking about MJF coming out and addressing my hometown on AEW Dynamite, it’s funny. It’s reminiscent of, this always seems to happen to me. First, we had Nero that wants to come out and pick a fight, and now you have Max or Jacob Friedman, who, he knows good and well that he’s going out there. He knows where I’m from. He knows my history. We go back to two different indies and different promotions in the past. We’ve come up in this business together, he knows I’m from Cincinnati. He knows the story of my father. And he knew on that night that I was going to come out there and have some words to say to him. What you saw was a very genuine reaction from the crowd, a very genuine rivalry being formed. This isn’t just some made up storyline. Me and Max have been going at each other’s necks for years now competing to decide who the fastest rising wrestling star in the world is, who is really going to be the future of this industry.
I think he knows that and I think he sees me as a threat. He’s going to come out in my own town and try to get emotionally under my skin. Well, once the emotions settle and Brian Pillman Jr. collects himself, I’m a very dangerous guy in the ring. I think it’s going to be a rude awakening for Max and Arthur Ashe. Especially, you want to talk about being in the ring and with Max Caster tonight, that could be an even better situation for me. I get to face a guy with another man ringside. I get to have the odds stacked against me. Well, if I come out victorious tonight, what does that say going into my match with MJF? It means that I’m going to be in a very good position as far as my confidence level. Going against higher numbers than myself, if I can beat two guys tonight, how does Max stand a chance against me?”
On the value of performing on AEW Dark: “I think it was a great experience. Especially, a guy like me, who, not a lot of tag team experience. It was something I could learn and challenge myself with in more of a team environment. I grew up playing team sports. I grew up playing football and lacrosse and all these things and we had practice far more frequent. We had way more games. To be able to go out there and be able to get a nice live round, a nice live match with another group of talent, whether it’s signed AEW talent which is going to be a much tougher match on the schedule, or whether it’s just a couple of students to enhance their talent that are trying to make a name for themselves. I appreciate and respect every opponent I ever stepped in that AEW Dark ring with because that’s the foundation of this company.
“And then most of our matches, if you look at the wall, you look at the board, most of our matches are going to be on Dark: Elevation. That’s the foundation of AEW. That’s how our athletes get better. That’s how we determine the strength of schedule and what people’s wins and losses are and everything. What we have here is a very sport-focused, very action-focused show. It was definitely an honor to be one of the mainstays of that show and team with Griff Garrison to develop myself as a tag wrestler. All that has contributed to the performer I am today. I think anybody that was in that Jacksonville Dark period where we always rocked the place, whether it was with fans or even before that, we had no fans in the building, I think we all got a lot better at our craft.”
On Bryan Danielson and Adam Cole joining AEW: “Well, like I said, I think we’re starting to form all the different pieces of the puzzle. All the factions are starting to fill out, all of these old rivalries and these different athletes that worked with each other at different companies in the past are starting to come together to finish … It’s their art. It’s their artwork and they’ve probably been planning out things. Some guys are going on five to 10 years ahead of time of really micro-managing their creative and their careers. That’s the beauty of AEW is that these guys, that’s the reason they want to be here. They want to come here. Every man has his vision. Every man wants to enact his vision of what his career should look like. You can’t get that done everywhere else. So sometimes that creative freedom and that drive to succeed and that ambitious attitude definitely blends better at a company like AEW where there’s a lot more freedoms, I think.”
