Current AEW star Bryan Danielson has reflected on a former WWE World Champion being booed after a major victory years ago\u2014and clarified that the reaction wasn\u2019t because of him.<\/p>\n
Danielson looked back on the moment WWE legend Batista was loudly booed after winning the 2014 Men\u2019s Royal Rumble. Although The Animal had just made his return, the crowd turned on him because they wanted Danielson\u2014who wasn\u2019t even part of the 30-man match\u2014to headline WrestleMania 30.<\/p>\n
The boos continued for months. Speaking with Chris Van Vliet on Insight, the man formerly known as Daniel Bryan said he actually felt sorry for Batista, who found himself in an impossible situation despite working hard to come back. Danielson added that the backlash wasn\u2019t really about him, pointing to similar fan momentum behind stars like Dolph Ziggler and Kofi Kingston at the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Batista won that Royal Rumble, I felt bad for him. He worked hard to come back and everything. If that happened now, or really any other year, he\u2019d get a great reaction. I don\u2019t think it was necessarily about me,\u201d Danielson said. \u201cThe crowd had gotten behind Dolph Ziggler and behind Kofi Kingston. They got to a certain level, and during that era, they were always kind of pushed back down.\u201d [H\/T: ewrestlingnews]<\/p>\n
Bryan Danielson\u2019s Role in AEW Today<\/p>\n
After a decorated run in both WWE and AEW, Bryan Danielson retired from full-time competition following his match against Jon Moxley at WrestleDream 2024. He has yet to return to the ring on television.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, The American Dragon now serves as a commentator on AEW Dynamite every Wednesday and at special events. Fans will have to wait to see whether he eventually steps back into the ring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Current AEW star Bryan Danielson has reflected on a former WWE World Champion being booed after a major victory years ago\u2014and clarified that the reaction wasn\u2019t because of him. Danielson looked back on the moment WWE legend Batista was loudly booed after winning the 2014 Men\u2019s Royal Rumble. Although The Animal had just made his …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":56196,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/images-14.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56440"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56444,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56440\/revisions\/56444"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/56196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}