Bryan Danielson Explains How He’s A Bully Backstage In AEW

Bryan Danielson was a guest on the latest episode of The Ringer Wrestling Podcast. During the conversation, he discussed the young age of AEW's Hook and being a "real bully" in the locker room.

Since arriving at AEW, Danielson's been mixing it up in the ring with many up-and-coming talents. One of the fastest rising stars of AEW is Hook. However, Hook has grown up during an entirely different generation of professional wrestling. Hook's reference points for his AEW in-ring career are vastly different from Danielson's as a result of this age gap.

"Hook, right, like he wasn't even born when I started wrestling, right? He doesn't, he doesn't know Vader vs Sting from 1992, right? Like he wasn't, like let alone you know, you know the 80s stuff I watched when I was a kid or whatever it is," Danielson said. "He has no reference to that, right? His reference to wrestling is completely different so I'm interested to see their perspective on what's cool, what's different. Because I'm a 40-year-old man. It's not like I know what's cool. I know what I like and I know what I think is cool. So it's always a learning experience for me and that's a lot of fun."

Bryan Danielson's return to AEW has him reuniting with a lot of faces from his WWE past. Two of those faces are Paul Wight & Mark Henry, who were both involved in his initial World Championship win in WWE. However, according to Danielson, he has a reputation of being a bully to superstars he's familiar with, including Wight & Henry.

"You have to understand that I'm a real bully. I start to bully people around a little bit. And people will laugh and think that's funny, but it's actually very true. I don't bully, like, I don't bully people I don't know," Danielson remarked. "I bully people like Paul Wight and Mark Henry. Like, when I came in, and Paul saw me and he goes, 'oh no, the bully's back'. More so, like, one of the things that I like is to just create discussion, interesting conversation, commodity amongst the boys, more so than anything else. Like I'm not trying to teach them anything about professional wrestling per se. But, one of the things that I enjoy the most and one of the things I missed being away from professional wrestling when I was forced to retire and not one of the boys is that most of us, for the most part, are a little weird. And like, you know, we've all got like, little weird things. So I just, I enjoy being in the locker room. I enjoy like, the different conversations. I enjoy, you know, all the different dynamics of different people and all that kind of stuff."

"We all, we all come to this from a different thing, you know, and I've really enjoyed that over the years. Especially you get younger guys in there," Bryan Danielson said. "You know, you get someone like Hook in there, who's super young. You get Lee Moriarity and Daniel Garcia. I told, we were talking about bullying actually on Wednesday and I said, 'yeah, I've just now started bullying Lee Moriarity,' and he goes, 'you won't bully me'. Like, just dead straight. I love that. He's awesome in the sense that he's, he's quiet, but he's not shy. He's very confident in himself and that's super cool. We're just having fun, but it's like, yeah. That's kind of the dynamic. I come in and try to bully people and then sometimes the tables get turned around."

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit The Ringer Wrestling Podcast and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription