Bryan Danielson has been doing the rounds to promote his match against Kenny Omega at AEW: Dynamite - Grand Slam, and among the topics covered is why he's not using "The Final Countdown" as his entrance theme. That became synonymous with Danielson during his time in Ring of Honor, but he confirmed that it was ultimately money that posed the biggest problem.
"Tony [Khan] and I talked about a couple of things. We had talked about ‘The Final Countdown,’ but that was way too expensive," he told Bleacher Report. "I hate talking [about] business stuff when I don’t exactly know what it was, but it wasn’t just the amount of money. They would only let [AEW] play it like 20 times a year or something like that."
"For several $100,000 you can play ‘Final Countdown’ 20 times a year. That doesn’t work for us."
In a separate interview with Barstool Rasslin', the subject of the "Yes!" chant was brought up. Needless to say, that would be huge in AEW, and while fans have started doing it independently of Danielson, him not leading the charge has definitely put something of a dampener on things.
Well, there's a reason for that and it goes back to a conversation he had with WWE shortly before leaving.
"I had a great conversation with Kevin Dunn with WWE before I debuted with AEW. I was very upfront with WWE about, ‘Okay, I want to let you guys know I’m leaving. This is my debut date’ and all that kind of stuff," Danielson recalled. "They asked me, politely, to respect their intellectual property, even some of the things that couldn’t be legally enforced. I’m trying my best to do that."
We're pretty sure WWE hasn't and can't trademark a chant, but it did take off in the company and you can understand why they might not be happy about Danielson making use of it elsewhere. Despite that, fans are unlikely to stop doing it when the former WWE Superstar appears on AEW shows, so it is what it is at this point!
Ahead of tonight's Dynamite, Bryan also penned a touching tribute to his time in WWE: