Wrestling icon, 43, clears up ‘retirement’ claim 6 months after last match

All Elite Wrestling star Bryan Danielson has insisted he has ‘no desire to wrestle’ again, but he’s refused to call it a retirement.

The 43-year-old former world champion, who wrestled in WWE as Daniel Bryan on Raw and SmackDown, hasn’t had a match since losing to Jon Moxley in October 2024.

Almost seven months later, he exclusively told Metro that the state of his neck after decades of punishment means he’s happy to hang up his boots.

‘I have no inclination right now, and no desire to wrestle right now. The last six months of my career built up to that I actually, I look at it now as a blessing,’ he said.

‘Because the six months leading into my last match were so hard and my neck was so bad. And, I mean, there’s things that I couldn’t physically do, right?’

He recalled facing Kazuchika Okada days before his last match when the story called for his rival’s title to be on the line for the first 20 minutes of the bout, after which point only Danielson’s world championship would be up for grabs.

‘What the story should be in that scenario is I’m pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing him, trying to get this fall done in the first 20 minutes,’ he pointed out.

‘That should have been the story, but my legs just couldn’t do it. So it was to the point where I was like, “Oh, I’m not physically able to do some of the things that I should, that this story requires me to do.” ‘

In other matches, he found himself ‘trying to get through and not get hurt’, and he decided he was ‘at peace’ with his career ending.

‘When the last match came against, against Moxley, I was ready. And that’s a good place to be, because when I was forced to retire before [in WWE in 2016], I didn’t want to be retired,’ he explained.

‘I kept fighting internally and outwardly to to come back. Now I’m at peace with it. And I don’t know if I would be so at peace if I hadn’t been hurting as bad as I was the last six months.’

Despite those feelings, Danielson insisted he would rather not call himself retired, particularly as people ask if he’ll be part of AEW and NJPW’s Forbidden Door show at London’s O2 arena in August.

‘I’m like, 95% chance no,’ he laughed. ‘But the reality is that, say you have a big main event and something happens where somebody gets hurt, and Tony says, “Hey Bryan, we need you for this thing, is there something you could do?”

‘Yeah, there’s something I could do. I just have to be careful. But I mean, it’s one of those things where there’s ways to work around it. But you just can’t do it all the time.’

Last summer, Danielson – who once said he would have happily wrestled at Butlin’s for the rest of his life – admitted he knew he’d need neck surgery one day, although he’s hoping to be able to rehab it’.

‘I’m making progress, but that still doesn’t mean I won;t have to get neck surgery. I’m trying to avoid it,’ he smiled, pointing out that his and Brie Bella’s son is ‘jumping on my neck all the time’, which is less of a problem if he’s not recovering.

He noted ‘the day to day has gotten better’ in the months since his last match, while AEW’s Cope (known to WWE fans as Edge) pointed him towards ‘someone in Toronto’ to help.

‘He worked on me for six hours straight, two days in a row, and he’s moving veins, like nerves,’ he said. ‘At that point, it had been almost a year since I had slept seven hours straight.’

Now, Danielson is in a much better place health-wise, and more satisfied than he was when WWE told him he had to hang up his boots in 2016.

While he likely won’t be wrestling at The O2 for Forbidden Door, the venue still holds a special place in his heart.

‘In [2015], it was the last place that I got to wrestle. It was me and John Cena against Tyson Kidd and Claudio Castagnoli,’ he recalled. ‘I remember so them telling me the day before, like, “Hey, we can’t have you wrestle. And by the way, you’re doing the main event of SmackDown tomorrow!”

‘I think it was more stressful for Tyson Kidd and Claudio, because they were specifically told, “If Bryan even falls down, you’re both fired.” So it’s like, what do you do with that?’

This time road, Danielson’s at peace, as he takes inspiration from the works of Utopia For Realists author Rutger Bregman and his idea of ‘moral ambition’.

‘What can I do to make the world just a little bit better?,’ the former champ pondered. ‘Those are the things I’m thinking about and working on.’

He added: ‘Honestly, I think a lot of things, most people who are doing things to make the world a better place, you’re never going to hear about…

‘I’m actively working on doing stuff outside of wrestling, there are things that I care about… You just want to do them for yourself, or the people around, the people you love.’

AEW returns to the UK for Dynamite & Collision at Glasgow’s OVO Hydro (August 24) and Forbidden Door (Aug 24). Tickets go on general sale on Friday, May 2 at 10am.

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