Bryan Danielson says it was 'really cool & really special' to wrestle Nigel McGuinness at AEW Grand Slam, thinks McGuinness was fantastic

Originally published at Bryan Danielson says it was 'really cool & really special' to wrestle Nigel McGuinness at AEW Grand Slam, thinks McGuinness was fantastic

Danielson and McGuinness kicked off the show.

Arthur Ashe Stadium once again played host to AEW’s Grand Slam event(s). For the Dynamite portion, the start of the show saw the match between Nigel McGuinness and AEW World Champion Bryan Danielson.

Danielson co-hosted The Nikki & Brie Show and opened up about the match. He described it as ‘really cool and really special’ and thinks McGuinness did fantastic.

He mentioned that Nigel flew his daughter out to watch him wrestle. Prior to the match, he asked Bryan to meet her so she could see that they were friends and were not actually going to hurt one another in the ring.

I had another really cool thing that happened on Wednesday is I got to wrestle Nigel McGuinness and a lot of people might not know Nigel McGuinness but, he was somebody that — we really helped make each other on the independent scene and that sort of thing and then he had a lot of injuries and all that kind of stuff and then he hasn’t wrestled — he hadn’t done a singles match in 13 years. He’s 48 years old and we just wrestled at Arthur Ashe Stadium on Wednesday and I mean, it was really cool and really special and for somebody who hasn’t wrestled in 13 years, he did fantastic, and it was so neat and it was so cool and it was so special… He flew out his daughter. He did something we (Danielson & Brie Garcia) should have done. Nigel said, ‘Hey, would you mind meeting my daughter beforehand? So that she can know that we’re friends and we’re not actually hurting each other out there’ and as soon as he told that to me, I was like, oh my gosh. We should have totally done that for (our children).

Elsewhere during the podcast, Danielson and Brie Garcia recounted their daughter Birdie’s interaction with Swerve Strickland after All In. She was scared to speak to him but after she did, she realized he was nice.

Strickland started a chant for Birdie backstage and people began to chant her name. Brie said Birdie then began teasing her brother about how people chanted her name and not chant his.

Danielson: But also, how scared was Birdie of Swerve (Strickland) after the match? Swerve is such a nice man, and then so he was down the stairs. Her eyes when she saw him was like, I don’t wanna go say hi to him. But we kind of forced her and then she was like, oh! He’s nice. 

Brie: Oh, and this is the best, you guys, I don’t know if I told you guys this but when we came back and Birdie’s going down to Swerve, Swerve kind of started the chant and everyone’s like, ‘Birdie! Birdie! Birdie!’ So finally, we’re all excited, yay, and then we’re walking towards maybe the cars or the back, somewhere and then Birdie goes to Buddy and goes, ‘Did you hear they chanted my name? Not yours’ and I go, ‘Bird, it’s not a competition.’ She’s like, ‘I’m just saying’ and then Buddy’s like, ‘Well, why didn’t they chant my name?’ And I’m like, ‘No, no, no. It’s not — Bird! Goodness.’

Next up on the docket for Bryan as AEW World Champion is a title defense against Jon Moxley at WrestleDream on October 12th. Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli and PAC turned on Danielson at All Out.

If the quotes in this article are used, please credit The Nikki & Brie Show with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.