During his sophomore year of high school, Danielson decided to pursue a pro wrestling career and attempted to train at Dean Malenko's wrestling school in Florida. However, by the time Danielson graduated from Aberdeen High School in 1999, Malenko's school had closed down. Following a friend's suggestion, he instead began training under Rudy Gonzalez and veteran wrestler Shawn Michaels at the Texas Wrestling Academy (TWA) in San Antonio, Texas.[7][11][12] After his wrestling debut in December 1999,[7][13] he toured Japan with Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling (FMW) alongside Lance Cade, a fellow trainee from the TWA, and they competed in several tag team matches.[14] He won the TWA Tag Team Championship with Spanky on March 21, 2000, defeating The Board Of Education (Jeromy Sage & Ruben Cruz), but they dropped the titles back to Jeremy Sage and Ruben Cruz two weeks later.[15][16]