Bryan Danielson Wins His First AEW World Championship At ‘AEW All In’

AEW’s All In PPV took place in London, England on Sunday. The August 25th show was packed with big matches, including Mercedes Mone/Brit Baker and Will Ospreay/MJF. Many others were part of the show, but perhaps the match everyone bought the show to see was Swerve Strickland vs Bryan Danielson for the AEW World Championship. Swerve has been having banger matches ever since winning the title from Samoa Joe back in April. Some were uncertain if Strickland should hold the title, as some did not see him as a main eventer or possible face of AEW.

However, those beliefs were doomed from the start as Swerve proved he belonged in the main event scene. The issue was that MJF had just returned, and Will Ospreay and Kazuchika Okada signed officially with All Elite Wrestling earlier this year. With all the new additions to the company and big names already around, would it make sense for Swerve to hold the biggest prize in the company? Sure, AEW has countless titles that are hard to keep up with at this point, but the World Title is still their top championship.

The man who holds that title is considered “the man” in AEW. They will stay in that spot until someone beats them for the title, and Swerve was seemingly unbeatable for months with the prize on the line. He faced a murderer’s row of top names to remain champion. Claudio Castagnoli, Christian Cage, Roderick Strong, and even Will Ospreay lost to Swerve. Each match proved how good he was, but a new challenger approached. He has never held the World Title in AEW but has been a World Champion in several other companies. He is the winner of the 2024 Men’s Owen Hart Tournament. This man’s name is Bryan Danielson.

BRYAN DANIELSON AEW HISTORY

Many might be shocked to learn that Bryan Danielson did not join AEW to become the World Champion. As Daniel Bryan, he main-evented a few WrestleMania events and held several World Championships in WWE. On the Indies, before going to WWE, he held World Titles in other places, including Ring of Honor. In fact, Danielson specifically stated he did not want to win the AEW World Championship. This was, of course, made into a storyline during the build-up for this match.

Many thought that was a bad decision on AEW’s part, as it technically devalued the title while Swerve held it. They basically said that Bryan is above being a mere “champion” and does not need it to say he had an excellent AEW career. Swerve might need to hold titles to claim such a thing. He did not come in with legendary status, of course. Plus, everyone knows Danielson is one of the best in-ring workers of all time, so every match he had was excellent.

After winning the Owen Hart Tournament, Jeff Jarrett and Eddie Kingston tried to motivate Bryan Danielson to pursue the title. The issue with their build was most likely trying to do this while going up against the Summer Olympics.

VIEWERSHIP ISSUES:

Even WWE took a hit from this in viewership…yet their crowd sizes did not shrink much, if at all, during that time. To be fair to everything, AEW had already started to see smaller viewership before the Olympics. Using Bryan Danielson to help them increase ratings was sensible, but one had to wonder if it was being attempted too late.

While Tony Khan ironically tried to get Warner Bros. Discovery to give him not just a new but much bigger deal for AEW programming, the shows were bombing by the week. Therefore, it made sense for Bryan Danielson to be the go-to man who brought audiences back to the show. The issue is that they lost people before they started the storyline.

Danielson has proven in both AEW and WWE that he can bring in ratings, but he could not save AEW’s ratings either. At least, not without something big. That led to the story so many of us were discussing before the event.

DANIELSON’S RETIREMENT?

One thing we knew about Bryan Danielson before AEW All In was that he had already mentioned needing surgery by the end of 2024. On top of this, Danielson has been open about potentially retiring completely. He had already retired from full-time wrestling, making him a part-time worker in AEW now. However, many could see him deciding to retire completely as his body has taken a lot in his AEW career. With surgery already needed, the time was now to make sense of a retirement. Yet that is exactly why a storyline was necessary.

Going into the event, Danielson agreed that he’d retire for good if he did not win the AEW World Championship.

In his final address to Swerve, Danielson claimed he’s the “best f***king wrestler in the world.”

Then he decided to bring back the “YES!” Chants. Of course, they never went away completely during his AEW run. Yet, as time passed, this was not embraced like before. That led to not playing into it like he once did, making it less common to see. The decision to go back to it was likely done to bring back the buzz and power Danielson had during his WWE run.

It made sense for Swerve to retain and for Bryan to retire. Of course, retirements never seem real in professional wrestling, so they could have found a way to get Bryan back if he wanted to return. However, with lowering viewership, giving the World Title to a man with the name power of Bryan Danielson was understandable. That is exactly what they did.

SWERVE’S MISTREATMENT AT THE TOP

We should be clear here that Swerve was not the reason for the drop in viewership. If anything, he was a reason to tune in. The drop was due to many other bad creative decisions and even Tony Khan’s idiotic antics online. Therefore, Swerve might be given some blame, but he shouldn’t see any of it. This man has been seeing nothing but mistreatment by AEW’s management and creative squad during his title reign.

While Swerve accomplished one of the best heel turns in recent memory and had excellent matches, management did not care. Heck, even after beating Samoa Joe for the title, he was not on the first AEW Dynamite post-win. Instead, his technical championship speech was relegated to AEW Collision of all places. Some believe AEW did this to help bring viewership to a show that is stuck in the horrible Saturday night timeslot. However, this is your World freakin Champion, AEW! You don’t have him on Dynamite and Collision, at least?

Guess where his first title defense took place. Ding Ding!! It was also on AEW Collision! The last World Title defense on AEW Collision occurred on October 28, 2023, with MJF facing Kenny Omega. That was not MJF’s first title defense, however.

Swerve did get to have one of his title defenses at AEW’s big Double or Nothing PPV against a red-hot Christian Cage. However, he did not main-event that show, as the Stadium Stampede went on last that evening.

FORBIDDEN DOOR:

The most notable issue during Swerve Strickland’s World Title run had nothing to do with Bryan Danielson taking the title from him on Sunday. It was his match against Will Ospreay at AEW Forbidden Door. Many felt that Ospreay would beat Strickland for the title that night. Ospreay was a massive signing for the company, and having him lose a title match this soon would be odd. They put themselves in a stupid position, as Ospreay should not have been given the match so soon into his official AEW career.

Ospreay lost to Strickland at the event, which was technically the right move to do with their newer champion. It later came out that Ospreay decided for Strickland to retain the title. Essentially, we were being given something big here. Tony Khan was prepared to give Ospreay the championship, but Will declined as he felt Swerve should beat him. Basically, if Will had not “decided to lose,” he could have become the AEW World Champion that night at Forbidden Door.

AEW was open to quickly giving the title to Ospreay while they were slowly pushing Swerve to the side. This is despite all the great work Swerve had done as the World Champion and throughout his entire AEW career leading up to that point. The heel turn had become a huge success, too.

This all came off badly for AEW and Swerve. We were presented with the idea that Swerve’s title run did not matter. We were given the idea that he needed Ospreay to decide “NOT” to be the champion so that he could retain against him. That is despite Swerve being a heel who could easily use heel tactics to retain against a superior opponent from a storyline perspective.

WHAT IS NEXT FOR BRYAN DANIELSON & SWERVE STRICKLAND?

Bryan Danielson will obviously have an AEW World Championship run that he has deserved for years now. However, things are uncertain for Swerve Strickland. Due to all of the mistreatment as the champion, we cannot be sure Swerve will even get a rematch for the title. On top of this, a former World Champion in AEW normally competes for other titles. However, we cannot be certain that Swerve will get that opportunity either. AEW will likely decide to have him work good matches with great wrestlers, but he might not see a lot of gold from it.

In fact, Swerve might very well lose out on holding gold for the remainder of 2024. On the other hand, Danielson could hold the World Championship for the remainder of this year. Due to how Bryan operates, he might be willing to have multiple World Title matches in a given month. With ratings down, giving us World Title matches on television that could go for an hour would be well worth it.

Not only can Danielson work a match for that long, but he also asks to do it constantly.

AEW also appears to be building to having Darby Allin as the person they want to win the title next. He could potentially face Danielson and lose soon but then get another shot at the title later in the year, where he could win. It’s uncertain how they’ll want to do it. What we can report for certain is that Swerve might not see another shot at the title for a while, at least not one where he’ll win it.