The current landscape of professional wrestling might look a lot different now if Bryan Danielson had returned to Ring of Honor in 2018.
All Elite Wrestling‘s Bryan Danielson recently sat down with Kenny McIntosh of Inside The Ropes to discuss a wide variety of subjects. During the interview, Danielson revealed he contemplated returning to Ring of Honor in 2018 when his WWE contract had expired, but the impending departures of The Young Bucks and Cody Rhodes made him think twice about it.
“It was really interesting, my contract with WWE was up in 2018, and I was considering going to Ring of Honor,” Bryan Danielson revealed. “I was talking to The Young Bucks, and I was talking to Cody [Rhodes] just to see, and their contracts were all up with Ring of Honor. I was like, ‘Well, what are you guys going to do?’
“Even my lawyer, who doesn’t know anything about pro wrestling, he said, ‘Hey, I don’t think you should sign with Ring of Honor if these Young Bucks aren’t going. Because they have got this YouTube show called Being The Elite, I don’t know if you have heard of it, it’s essentially the driver of the popularity of Ring of Honor. So if those guys go away, we don’t know if Ring of Honor will still be as popular. Then with Cody’s contract coming up, if they leave and Cody leaves, what will Ring of Honor’s popularity be like?’
“So that was part of the discussion. When you are looking at it in 2014, you don’t envision The Young Bucks starting a YouTube channel, and it is going to become super hot and a catalyst for change in pro wrestling. You also don’t envision that even if there is someone with money who backs them and whatever it is, is it going to be someone who is really willing to be fully invested in it the way that Tony Khan is? So you could never have imagined it. But I think that given that, it’s really cool.”
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What do you make of Bryan Danielson’s comments? How different could the current wrestling landscape look had Danielson jumped to Ring of Honor in 2018? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
