Bryan Danielson believes AEW is responsible for WWE paying its stars more.
A few years ago, in 2021, Bryan Danielson (Daniel Bryan) wrestled his last match for WWE. Soon after, the American Dragon made the switch and joined Tony Khan’s AEW.
Evolving into a locker room leader and one of the most respected stars in the Jacksonville-based promotion, Danielson recently opened up on a vital discussion regarding AEW and WWE’s salary structure.
Recently, speaking to The Kairouz Bros, the 44-year-old opened up about the reason why WWE has to pay its stars more. Labeling All Elite Wrestling as a challenger promotion, Danielson addressed that while AEW makes significantly less money than the Stamford-based promotion, it pays a hefty amount to its stars, prompting WWE to do the same.
“I’m just curious, like, what the people who are making these decisions, what they’re thinking, right? 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. So, for example, in most major sports in the United States, the players get anywhere between 40 to 50% of the revenue.
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 is going to leave and go to AEW. Aw does pay that 40 to 50% of their revenue to their wrestlers. You know, despite making much less money. I mean, we still, our TV rights deal was incredible, but we’re, we’re still the challenger brand catching up on however many years WWE has.”
H/t Fightful
Bryan Danielson Addresses WWE Veteran The Rock’s Recent Weight Loss Pictures
Do you know what’s funny? He’s super handsome? Do you know what he looked like to me when I saw the picture in comparison to the rest of his body? Now it looks like he has a big head! Guess what, Rock? You’re not so handsome anymore. How does it feel, I mean, he’s still obviously much more handsome than me, but how does it feel to not be as handsome as you used to be? Take that!
Didn’t it look like a big head? It did look like a big head.”
[Host: “Maybe, we’re just so used to it being in proportion to his like jacked delts?”]
“And it might just be that we never noticed because he was so jacked, he just always had this giant head!”
In other news: MJF has done something only he could do, just days after his marriage.