AEW World Champion Swerve Strickland appeared on Barstool’s Rasslin’ podcast to talk about a number of topics, including if he is fine with ending Bryan Danielson’s career at All In.
Strickland said, “100%. That’s one of those things I’m talking about being unique in a title reign. What’s more unique in my championship reign than ending the in-ring career of one of the greatest of our era, one of the greatest to ever wrestle inside a wrestling ring? He’s one of the pioneers…to me, his era of Ring of Era, he was the pioneer for what you get on wrestling television now, not just in All Elite Wrestling but in every company that you see, that independent style, that hard-hitting, the grappling, that pace and style, it’s truly been revolutionized and it’s made it to mainstream now, and that’s a huge thank you to Bryan Danielson for being one of the pioneers of that. It’s part of the reason why I do what I do and how I wrestle the way I wrestle, and why I look up to a lot of these guys the way that I do.” “Us both being from the state of Washington, there’s a lot of pride in Pacific Northwest in both sides of that. I always wanted to be the king of the Pacific Northwest and be one of the guys. You think of Seattle, you think of Washington, you think of Tacoma, and you think of me. There’s this overbearing shadow of Bryan Danielson. If I take that out, it’s just me now, so there’s a lot of pride in that for me.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to Fightful for transcribing the above quotes)
