While promoting next year’s live events in Australia, Bryan Danielson spoke to the Kairouz Brothers podcast and was asked about WWE running programming directly against AEW’s shows. Danielson seemed to suggest that he doesn’t understand WWE’s motives for doing that, referencing them as “weird games.”
“I’m just curious what the people who are making these decisions, what they’re thinking? In the sense of like, ‘Oh, okay, this AEW thing, it’s a real danger to our billion-dollar business.’ That can’t be it.”
“AEW existing and being this challenger brand and being as successful as we’ve been has changed the landscape for wrestling for the wrestlers themselves. Wrestlers are being paid more now than ever. From a sports rights perspective, for example, most major sports in the United States, the players get anywhere between 40 to 50 percent of the revenue and WWE was paying their wrestlers nowhere close to that. Now keep in mind, they’re still not paying anywhere close to that but they do have to pay more because if they don’t, the talent’s going to leave and go to AEW.”
“AEW does pay that 40 to 50 percent of their revenue to their wrestlers and despite making much less money. I mean, our TV rights deal was incredible, but we’re still the challenger brand catching up on however many years WWE’s had. We’re not at the point of being a threat. it’s just weird. This is one of the things that people who really crave power and a lot of money play these weird games that I don’t understand.”
“It’s good for the wrestlers both in AEW and in WWE. It’s been good for them. If AEW wouldn’t have started, would Cody Rhodess be where he is right now? No, they have a mega star because AEW exists, right? Would CM Punk ever have come back? Probably not.”
WWE most recently announced that Wrestlepalooza would air on September 20 in Indianapolis, the same day AEW runs All Out in Toronto, Ontario. Initially, the two sides were scheduled to run head-to-head but AEW avoided that by revealing that their PPV would air in the afternoon, which means that perhaps only the tail end of the show will run against WWE.
