WWE News: Daniel Bryan Reveals That He Had Accepted His Retirement From Wrestling Before WWE Brought Him Back
What's the story?
Daniel Bryan was cleared to return to the ring earlier this year after more than two years on the sidelines, but before Bryan was brought back into the company as SmackDown Live General Manager, he was prepared to leave the business.
In case you didn't know...
Daniel Bryan has never known anything but wrestling in his life, for almost the past two decades, Bryan has been wrestling all over the world but he was forced to call time on his in-ring career back in February 2016 after doctors failed to clear him to compete.
Bryan's retirement was a hard pill for him to swallow and he started to look at life outside of the ring in the months that followed. Bryan was later brought back to the company as the General Manager of SmackDown Live which is where he was able to finally be cleared more than a year later.
The heart of the matter
Bryan addressed the rumors surrounding his WWE contract when he recently appeared on Booker T's Heated Confessions Podcast and he revealed that it was true that he was looking to wrestle outside of the company if he couldn't be cleared to compete. Interestingly, Bryan also recalled that he had accepted his retirement before WWE decided to bring him back as General Manager.
"It's also because I had just signed a contract before I had my last concussion but they hadn't signed their side of the contract yet, so this when I had finally started to get popular and all that kind of stuffand they were like, we're going to give you a bigger contract but then they took that away. It was a big step financially so there was that but the big thing was that I wasn't able to do this thing that I was passionate about despite being cleared by all these doctors."
Bryan was brought back as SmackDown General Manager following the brand split in the summer of 2016 and it appears that this is what gave him his passion back.
"The weirdest thing about it is I probably would have been satisfied and just like accepted my retirement if they hadn't brought me back as GM because it was so soon after I had retired and I had signed up for school, I had signed up for ASU, I was doing a permaculture design course. I was doing all this different kind of stuff trying to transition my life into more of a homelife but then they brought me back and it was only a couple of months after I was forced to retire. I'm sitting at ringide for a Dean Ambrose/AJ Styles match and I'm sitting there watching the match and I wasn't wrestling when AJ got brought into WWE and I was just thinking, 'what am I doing I should be in there?'"
What's next?
Daniel Bryan faces The Miz at Super Show-Down on October 6th for a shot at the WWE Championship which could be around the waist of either AJ Styles or Samoa Joe following the event in Australia.
Do you think WWE was right to bring Bryan back? Have your say in the comments section below...