In a recent interview with The Ringer, AEW wrestler Bryan Danielson discussed wrestling Kenny Omega, Hangman Page, and Jade Cargill’s progress in the ring.
You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On wrestling Kenny Omega and testing AEW wrestlers in the ring: “I had wrestled him a couple of times on the independents before, once in a singles, once in a triple-threat match. And so you knew already then. You knew he was great. His mind just worked differently than everybody else’s. It was more can I still hang with that kind of style? It’s a very physical style, and it wasn’t a style necessarily that we did in WWE.”
On Hangman Page: “Hangman was a little bit different. … You see so much potential, but when you look at him, you don’t know how good he is [until] you get in the ring with him. And then one of the things that I was very impressed with was that he had never done a singles match over 30 minutes. … You watch him, and he has these incredible matches with these other people. So, for example, one of the matches that I loved from AEW before I started was he tagged with Kenny against the Young Bucks, but he was very familiar with those guys. He and I had never wrestled before. He’d never wrestled a singles match over 30 minutes, and now he and I are going to do it. The first time we’re really touching is an hour-long match on television.”
On his legacy in wrestling: “I have no interest in legacy in the sense of I’m not even convinced professional wrestling is going to be around in, say, 50 years. And even if it is, I’m not overly concerned with what people think of my wrestling in 50 years’ time.”
On Jade Cargill: “She was put in with very little training—on live TV—and she has to learn to wrestle. I think it would be best for her improvement to be able to go and do some other shows. She had expressed interest to me in being able to go to Japan and work, like, a tour for three months. She would come back a completely different wrestler. I had to learn wrestling. The physical act of wrestling came very easily to me, and the understanding of putting together matches and stuff. I had some great people that I worked with. The hard part was the performance aspect of being a star. She already has the star aspect of it, so for her, it’s catching up on the wrestling aspect of it. And I think she’s done a very good job with that, especially given the circumstances; it’s not like she’s getting to wrestle even 10 matches a month. She’s getting to wrestle at most, what, two matches a month. It’s hard to get better at the wrestling stuff when you’re wrestling so infrequently. But she shows up, she works hard, and she already has that star presence that goes a long way. So yeah, I think she’s going to do really well.”
