Bryan Danielson has announced that his full-time wrestling career will wrap up this year, but he plans to keep competing in a few matches each year. His contract with AEW just ended earlier this month.
Danielson is set to face Swerve Strickland for the AEW World Heavyweight Title at All In. The catch is that if he loses, he’ll have to hang up his boots for good.
In a chat with BBC Radio, Danielson mentioned that he’s okay with retiring if he doesn’t win the title.
“Yeah. Yeah, I am. If I wasn’t at peace with it, we wouldn’t have done that, right? [laughs] I also think that, I’ve been wrestling for 25 years at this point. To me, it’s now or nothing as far as winning the AEW World Championship. I came in and I said I was going to kick people’s heads in and win the AEW World Championship. I’ve kicked a lot of people’s heads in, but I haven’t won a single title.”
“I think it was Alex Marvez, he’s our guy that knows all the stats and stuff like that. [He said], I don’t know if you know this, but you’ve lost, even going back to WWE, I haven’t won a title match in my last 19 attempts. So it’s like, I’m at peace with it. My life is different now. When I was forced to retire, I wasn’t ready. 2015 was kind of my last match, but I was forced to retire in 2016. At that point, I’m 35 years old and I’m just like, this doesn’t feel right. I also didn’t have anything else to put my attention and focus towards and now I do, I have a wonderful family that I’m excited about spending time with and everything. So yeah, it’s a very different place when it’s by choice and you’re not forced.”
H/T to Fightful for the transcription. Thanks for checking out this article. Make sure to follow Jeff Jarrett and all things GFE on Facebook.