Bryan Danielson, Roderick Strong and the Young Bucks are now part of the same company, following Strong’s shock debut in All Elite Wrestling.
Danielson was a big star in WWE until the day he left, with many fans shocked that he left just weeks after main eventing WrestleMania, against Roman Reigns and Edge.
Some thought he might work in Mexico, whilst some thought that Bryan Danielson could retire from wrestling altogether.
However, he decided to join AEW instead, and has hit the ground running. Bryan Danielson vs Kenny Omega was the best AEW match ever, and he looks set to feud with the Young Bucks and the Elite going forward.
Although Bryan Danielson has faced the Young Bucks before, and it’s a match the Young Bucks will be happy to forget.
Bryan Danielson beat up the Young Bucks
In their hit book “Killing the Business”, the Young Bucks talk about a match they had in PWG. They faced Bryan Danielson and Roderick Strong, two of the biggest names on the independents.
The Young Bucks were still high flying, babyface tag team. Very much in the mould of the Hardy Boys, or the Rockers before them. Nick and Matt Jackson had long felt they needed to turn heel, and the fans agreed.
The fans booed the pair as they made their way into the arena, and did not stop there. All through the match, despite them being the good guys, the Young Bucks received lots of boos.
Wanting to change that, Bryan Danielson and Roderick Strong had an idea that didn’t quite go to plan…
Bryan Danielson & Roderick Strong vs The Young Bucks
In their book “Killing the Business”, Nick & Matt Jackson (AKA The Young Bucks) wrote about the time they wrestled against Bryan Danielson and Roderick Strong during a match in PWG.
The Bucks had begun to be hated by the fans, although that was not their intention.
To counteract this, Danielson and Strong decided that the way to get them sympathy from the crowd was to beat them up – for real.
While this seemed sensible, it did not work. The fans were bloodthirsty, and their cheers for the attackers grew and grew.
Not knowing what to do, the beatings got worse until Nick and Matt were getting hurt for real, and had to fight back.
This was a bad call by Bryan Danielson and Roderick Strong, although the issue was quashed and the two men remain friends with The Young Bucks to this day.
“For the last match of the evening we were booked against Roderick Strong and Bryan Danielson. Both were average-sized guys but heavy-hitting technical wrestlers, most known for their amazing matches at ROH.
Bryan Danielson was then the most popular independent wrestler on the planet, and by far the most respected. The plan was for us to beat them next in the finals and continue a winning streak that we had going for quite some time. Bryan and Roderick just watched the crowd turn on us completely but had a plan to try to fix it.”
“This is going to sound strange, but we’re really going to have to give you guys a beating tonight to make this work,” Bryan said. The idea was, if we could suffer enough damage, we could get the crowd to sympathize with us and get them back on our side.
Except . . . that plan didn’t work. Every time Bryan kicked, slapped, or chopped us, the crowd wanted more. Every time Roderick suplexed or body-slammed us, the crowd wanted more. And guess what? When we tried to fight back, the audience booed.
Too stubborn, Roderick and Bryan were convinced they could still flip the crowd, so they continued to give us a beating. The crowd continued to cheer. Finally, feeling taken advantage of, Matt and I began to defend ourselves, and suddenly the match felt like a real fight.
But the more we fought back, the harder they hit us back. And the harder they hit us, the louder the bloodthirsty fans got.
All our chests were purple and blistering. And while Bryan continued to deliver multiple stiff elbow strikes to my head, I yelled, “Okay! That’s enough!” I didn’t want to look like a punk, and I respected the hell out of Bryan, but I simply couldn’t take any more.”
The Young Bucks also spoke about the match on an episode of Talk is Jericho, regaling Chris Jericho with the above story.