Bryan Danielson provides update on his neck issues and if he will wrestle again

AEW commentator Bryan Danielson did an interview with Chris Van Vliet. Here are a few highlights courtesy of ChrisVanVliet.com…

His neck issues: “So I have degeneration from C1 all the way down to T2. [Your entire neck?] Yeah. So it’s like I’m on the cusp of needing surgery. It’s this weird line. I’d like to avoid surgery as much as possible. So my last neck surgery, I never fully recovered from it in the sense of getting back the strength gains and the mobility and all that sort of thing. So I’d really like to avoid it as much as possible, especially because my son is a menace. I had a broken arm, you have a big cast, I’m in a sling. I was like, ‘Buddy, you can’t touch daddy’s arm.’ And he’s jumping on my arm and all this kind of stuff. And I’m just like, Oh no, if I get neck surgery, it’s not like you wear a neck brace, not like you walk around in a neck brace. He’s pure boy. No matter how many times Brie tells him, and I tell him, but not as forcefully as Brie does, but Brie is, like, ‘Get off of daddy’s neck!’ And he just can’t not do it. It’s just like a boy thing. Our daughter is super good about it, but he’s all boy.”

Are you retired from the ring? “I hate the R word because I was forced to retire before. So I never consider myself fully retired. This is how I think, and this is how a lot of wrestlers think, Well, I think I could do this in this situation, if needed, or called upon, or whatever it is. But effectively for the Bryan Danielson that I used to be, yeah, that guy doesn’t exist anymore.”

Do you want to go back if you can’t be that Bryan Danielson? “I would love to, but not on TV. So, for example, I spent a large portion of my early career doing Butlins shows in the UK, because I was very bad at performing and being entertaining. William Regal hooked me up with Brian Dixon. We’d go over and do these Butlins holiday camps. So you pay $500 for a weekend, and your whole family can go. It includes food. It includes entertainment. So you see magicians, you see musicians, you can go to a dance hall, and oh, in the afternoon, there’s wrestling. So these people aren’t wrestling fans. They just want to be entertained. You know what I mean? So William Regal had me go over there, because although I naturally picked up the wrestling aspect of it very quickly, I did not pick up the entertainment aspect very quickly. So I spent a lot of time, and I learned to love it. I’d sing the American National Anthem, very poorly, and forget the words. There would be times where I’d be like, Okay, how many times can I accidentally hit myself in the crotch and all these sorts of things. We were doing it six, seven days a week, every week. The first time I went was 2003 and I was there for six months, and in the last 15 days I was there, I wrestled 21 matches. So you kind of have to with this kind of schedule, and you’re doing long drives every day and all that kind of stuff. With that kind of schedule, you had to be more entertaining. That’s what Regal said. He said that stuff saved me when I was hurt. When you look at William Regal’s career, I remember all the great wrestling matches. But what I think a lot of fans remember is his comedy skits backstage and how funny he was. Then, if you look at his ring stuff, when he was doing a lot of flexing and then pushing his bicep up and all that kind of stuff. But that’s all stuff that you learn from doing these holiday camps versus, at the time, I was doing a lot of independent wrestling that was very much geared towards having great matches, right? So yeah, I think I could go have fun matches and have fun doing the fun matches. But then I don’t think that’s the kind of wrestling fans would want to pay to see Bryan Danielson do.”