Return of the Dragon
Last week on the 20th of March in the year 2018 came some of the best news that this wrestling fan has ever heard. Daniel Bryan (Bryan Danielson) has been cleared by the WWE to wrestle. The former Ring of Honor, Pro Wrestling Guerilla, WWE Heavyweight Champion, and WWE Champion has finally been given the green light to get back in the squared circle and do what he loves to do. It has been a long and arduous journey for Bryan when at the absolute peak of his wrestling career had to forcibly retire from in-ring competition. He won the big one at WrestleMania 30 defeating not only HHH in the opening contest, by later defeating Randy Orton, and Batista in a triple threat match main event to win the undisputed WWE Championship. He only defended the title the following month at Extreme Rules against Kane in a completely forgettable match, then announced on the May 12th episode of RAW that he would have to undergo neck surgery and was kayfabe attacked by Kane to explain his absence. Three days later he underwent a successful neck surgery, with a cervical foraminotomy to decompress the pressure on the nerves in his neck. This procedure is usually done to relieve the symptoms of nerve root compression where the foramen is being compressed by bone, disc, scar tissue, or excessive ligament damage. Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Bryan was suffering from all of these symptoms, because Bryan was a bump taking machine.
We all know what happened next, since he would not be able to compete at the Money in the Bank PPV to defend his title, the Authority stripped him of his title on the June 9th episode of RAW. Many months after his surgery long after he was expected to recover his strength hadn’t returned to him, and he declined a second surgery instead he went to Denver, CO and took part in a Muscle Activation Technique program which finally restored the strength to his right arm.
29 December 2014 he announced he would be returning to in-ring competition and he would be competing in the infamous 2015 Royal Rumble match. The 2015 Royal Rumble started off ok, the great tag team of Cesaro and Tyson Kidd defeated the New Day, The WWE Championship match was outstanding w/ Lesnar defeating Rollins and Cena. Then the Rumble match itself happened. Everyone in Philadelphia was so excited when Bryan entered the ring, he got an elimination and the crowd popped…then…he was quickly eliminated. Done. The WWE lost the Philly crowd that night for good. Chants of Daniel Bryan echoed throughout the arena for the remainder of the match, as well as CM Punk and other chants. When the eventual winner Roman Reigns won…the crowd erupted in anger, because the company’s chosen one went over instead of the audience’s chosen one. #Cancelthenetwork was trending immediately on Twitter following the Rumble because so many people were outraged at the fact that Daniel Bryan had such a disappointing run in the Rumble. The next month WWE gave Bryan a chance to get to the WrestleMania main event against Brock Lesnar by facing the winner of the Royal Rumble Roman Reigns. Needless to say, Bryan was unsuccessful in a pretty good match against Reigns, and Reigns went on to Mania to face Lesnar. Daniel Bryan would compete in an Intercontinental Championship ladder match at WrestleMania that he would go on to win. But much like the year before, he would have one title defense against Dolph Ziggler the next night on RAW and due to his injuries was pulled from the next PPV and the European tour. After about a month off television on the 11 May episode of RAW he announced to the WWE Universe that he didn’t know when he would be able to compete again and he would be out for an undisclosed period of time and he relinquished the IC title.
We didn’t see or hear from Daniel Bryan basically for the remainder of the 2015 calendar year and he returned to television on 8 February 2016 on RAW which was emanating from his home state of Washington in which he announced his retirement from professional wrestling. Due to at least ten concussions he suffered in his career and a small subacute lesion in his brain’s temporoparietal region and concussion related seizures his retirement seemed like an indefinite thing. Now, reported by Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer, Bryan was cleared in the spring of 2016 by the head doctor of the Arizona Cardinals football team (Bryan and Brie currently reside in AZ) and also passed a concussion test at UCLA with flying colors, but was still not cleared by Dr. Joseph Maroon who is the current medical director of WWE.
Initially, he asked for an early release from his contract but was denied his release by Vince McMahon, and then he asked for a different role within the company. Once the brand extension returned, Daniel Bryan became the SmackDown Live General Manager under Commissioner Shane McMahon. He was a regular on the awesome but now cancelled show “Talking Smack” and if you could read between the lines he often expressed his disdain for the company, and his growing frustrations of not being able to perform. It made for great television and it was personally a show that I wouldn’t miss, so of course the WWE Network cancelled it. This seemed to be his fate at least until his WWE contract expires until late summer of 2018, but…he started getting involved in the feud between Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens, and Commissioner Shane McMahon. At the Clash of Champions PPV, Owens and Zayn were facing Randy Orton and Shinsuke Nakamura in a tag match and Shane and Bryan acted as the two referee’s for the match. Constantly during the match, Shane and Bryan were arguing due to Shane’s blatant bias towards Owens and Zayn (two of Bryan’s friends from PWG and ROH). Shane intentionally stopped at the count of two when Sami had Randy Orton pinned, and it set off an argument between the GM and the Commissioner and Bryan actually shoved McMahon. The finish comes when Daniel Bryan uses a blatant fast count giving Owens and Zayn the win.
All of this brings us back to the 20th of March 2018 when news broke early in the day that Bryan was finally cleared to wrestle again for WWE and on that night’s edition of SmackDown Live Daniel Bryan addressed the WWE Universe once again and delivered a great speech, I wouldn’t even call it a promo, as it was something from the heart, and it was real, and we all could feel it. You could feel his anger, and his gratefulness, and his bitterness, and his eventual relief that after all these years and all these medical tests WWE finally cleared him to enter the squared circle once again. Later in the night, he had to Kayfabe fire Owens and Zayn and they attacked him for it, which of course led us to the 27 March edition of SmackDown Live when the challenge was issued, Daniel Bryan Shane McMahon vs Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn at WrestleMania.
I’ve been going back quite a bit this year even before his being medically cleared was even a thing, and watching some of his performances from early in his career. His outstanding reign as Ring of Honor Champion, and his matches w/ Nigel McGuiness, Morishima, Austin Aries, AJ Styles among others. I’ve checked out his PWG stuff, when he had memorable matches w/ Chris Hero, and El Generico and Kevin Steen. Once thing is for sure, the world of professional wrestling has been given a shot in the arm with the return of the American Dragon, the best in the world, the leader of the YES Movement, the return of Daniel Bryan. As fans, we all we should literally be saying at this point, is YES YES YES!!!!!!!
