AEW star and professional wrestling veteran Bryan Danielson spoke with The Wide World of Sports about various topics, including his satisfaction with going out on his own terms.
Danielson said, “I feel infinitely more content, honestly. My life has changed and it’s different when it’s your own decision as opposed to when you’re not allowed to do this thing that you love anymore.”
On thinking about retiring after his match at All Out 2024 at Wembley Stadium:
“Yeah 100 percent – that was definitely a thought that I had, one of the things that I thought was that regardless of if I win or lose this match, it was being able to celebrate the end of my career with my family. If I win, great, I celebrate the title win with my family. If I lose, celebrate this incredible journey that I have been on, with my family, in the middle of the ring. Both things would have been great and the idea is that if it was going to be my last match, you want to give everything you have and don’t leave anything on the table. None of us necessarily deserve any of these things, I haven’t done anything to deserve 50,000 people in a stadium and my family being able to be there and main eventing the show … that’s how I look back on it, from a gratitude perspective.”
On the possibility of an in-ring return:
“It’s interesting, because you never say never – but there’s not an appeal to me to go out there and do that type of match that I did with Swerve Strickland. Sure, there’s the part when I’m watching it, I get super excited and think I would love to get back in there – but then it’s like, what are you talking about? My body physically can’t do some of those things anymore. If I’m going to do it, it can’t be at the scale that I did it before. If I tried to do some of the things I did in my last year with AEW right now, I don’t think I’d be able to go back and hold my kids. Anything that I would do moving forward has to be with that in mind, because that is now my number one priority. Stay healthy, be at home and play with my kids and coach my son’s tee-ball team.”
