Speaking about his arm, Danielson said him continuing to wrestle on it is delaying the healing process.
In the main event of AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door II, Bryan Danielson scored a win over Kazuchika Okada. As the bout was ongoing, Danielson suffered a broken arm. He returned to in-ring competition two months later and has been competing on a consistent basis since then.
Going into his TNT Title match with Christian Cage on Collision, Danielson was interviewed by Jeff Adams of Sports Nightly. He thinks by continuously wrestling on his arm, it is delaying it from getting back to 100 percent.
It’s doing okay (Danielson said about his arm). I think by continuously wrestling on it, I’m slowing it down from healing 100 percent (he laughed). But you know, as older wrestlers like to say, we never anticipate being 100 percent ever again. So, I think that’s kind of where I’m at. It’s fully functional. I can do pull-ups and I can do all these different sorts of things. It’s just the mobility is still not — doing this hurt (Bryan bent his wrist), whereas doing this on my left side doesn’t hurt at all. It’s just that kind of thing. There’s nothing that’s going to happen to the bone because they put a rod in it with nine screws. So, the dangerous part the doctor said is actually where it breaks. If it were to break again, it’s easier to break where the rod ends because the rod itself acts as a fulcrum that it could bend against. But then really it’s like the nerve and muscle damage. Part of that is because I wrestled for 10 minutes with a broken arm and then part of it is just the work that we do, so…
In addition to the match with Christian Cage, Danielson competed earlier that week in the opener of Dynamite Title Tuesday against Swerve Strickland. Prior to the show, a photo was posted onto social media of Danielson, Adam Copeland and Saraya, who have all been told at one point that they would not be able to wrestle again.
Danielson spoke about that and shared a joke he made about combining all three of their necks and still not having one complete neck.
It was just a cool realization because of all three of us (Danielson, Adam Copeland & Saraya) had matches on Tuesday and we were all kind of in the ring before the show, warming up and that sort of thing and there was just (a) realization, I think it was Saraya who had it first was that, ‘Hey, we’re all in the ring together and we’ve all got matches tonight. This is surreal, because we were all told at different points that we’d never wrestle again.’ I did say that between the three of us, you combine the three of our necks together and I don’t think you even have one complete neck (he laughed). But it is cool and it also is a testament to the advancement of medical technologies but also, all three of us, we were told we shouldn’t do this anymore and we kept fighting through, right? And that’s just kind of a — and one thing feeds off another. When you hear somebody else has been able to come back, well then you think like, okay, maybe I can come back and that sort of thing and those sort of reinforcing stories help us all.
AEW World Tag Team Champion Ricky Starks cost Danielson the title match against Christian. The show closed with Cage, Luchasaurus, Nick Wayne, Big Bill and Ricky Starks brawling with Danielson, Adam Copeland and FTR (Dax Harwood & Cash Wheeler).
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Sports Nightly with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
