Bryan Danielson: If You Put On Excellent Professional Wrestling, People Will Tune In

Bryan Danielson explains his philosophy and his goal as it pertains to making sure AEW continues to attract viewers.

When AEW Dynamite first began, the show was going head-to-head with WWE NXT. While NXT has long since moved to Tuesday nights, the two shows did square off again on October 10, 2023, when AEW presented a special Title Tuesday edition of AEW Dynamite.

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Speaking about competing against NXT and competing against all forms of entertainment in general, Bryan Danielson noted during a recent SXSW panel that his goal is to consistently put on the best wrestling show possible and he believes that everybody was proud of the show put on that night.

"I think everybody in the company was really proud of that show," said Danielson. "In my mind, and this is probably different from the way Tony views it from a business perspective. I don’t necessarily look at what the competitors are doing. On that particular night, I wasn’t worried about it. My thing is, focus on what we do best. We do things differently, and our fanbase loves the way we do things. let’s embrace the things that we do really well and put on our best possible show and not worry about necessarily about what’s going on on a different channel.

"Realistically, it’s not just that particular Tuesday night. It’s every Wednesday and every week you’re battling something," Danielson adds. "You’re not just battling other shows. You’re battling people’s addiction to their phones and all sorts of things. How do you keep people’s attention? In my mind, it keeps going back to this idea of quality. Something I said when I first joined AEW is that if you put on excellent professional wrestling, people will tune in. That’s the goal weekly. Put on an excellent professional wrestling show."

Elsewhere in this discussion, Danielson opened up about why he will never officially retire again. Read his comments here.

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