Bryan Danielson confirms the story behind his AEW entrance music

With the wrestler formerly known as Daniel Bryan all but confirmed to be joining All Elite Wrestling last month, fans discussed what entrance music he should use in his post-WWE career. Some favored sticking with Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries”. Others favored a return to his old Ring of Honor theme, Europe’s “The Final Countdown”.

In the 19th century German composer’s favor was the fact his music is no public domain, whereas Tony Khan would have to break out the checkbook to use the Swedish rockers’ tune.

At All Out, we learned that Bryan Danielson would be using a new track that incorporated some of “Ride of the Valkyries”, and a crowd chant from his indie days. That was followed by a report Europe wanted a lot of money for “The Final Countdown”.

Danielson confirmed that - with some dollar figure estimates about what the hair band wanted for rights to their 1986 anthem - in an interview with Bleacher Report. He also offered the origin of his new theme, “Born For Greatness” by Elliot Taylor:

“Tony and I talked about a couple of things. We had talked about ‘The Final Countdown,’ but that was way too expensive. I hate talking 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.

“I had kind of wanted something a bit different, so I reached out to my friend, Elliott Taylor, and said ‘Hey, here’s an idea. But I don’t know if it’s any good. Could you do something like this?’ He dropped everything. I think he’s done 72 hours in the studio and made the song that I come out to now, which I think he’s also going to do a full-length release because it actually has like two chorus lyrics.

“I really, really liked it. And it also incorporates a chant that people would do when I was on the independents. I kind of wanted to get it in there. I would love for people to start chanting it again.”

There you have it.

Now do Bryan a favor. Fewer “YES” chants. More “You’re gonna get your f-ing head kicked in” ones.