During a recent panel appearance at Starrcast, Bryan Danielson offered his perspective on the state of the wrestling world, beginning with high praise for the current All Elite Wrestling product. He noted that despite not being involved with the creative side for some time, he watches both weekly shows from home and is impressed by the quality.
“So, I haven’t had much to do—much of anything to do—with creative in AEW for a while, but I think the AEW shows for the last several months have just been incredible. You know, I watch the product every week at home, both shows, and I just think that the people—the wrestlers, the people involved in the creative—everybody’s doing just such a great job.”
The AEW star then contrasted his praise with a more critical assessment of his former company, WWE. Danielson remarked that he has never been afraid to voice his critiques, citing that even during his tenure with WWE, he expressed concerns about the creative direction.
He explained that he felt certain aspects of the product came across as a “parody of wrestling,” a sentiment he even included in a book published by WWE. According to Danielson, that feeling persists today.
“So, that’s like—listen, I’m not afraid to be critical of a creative process or what I see in the sense of, like, okay, maybe even when I was in WWE I would say, ‘Okay, sometimes this feels like a parody of wrestling to me.’ I wrote that in my book that was put out by WWE. Even now WWE seems like a parody of wrestling to me at times.”