Bryan Danielson health update after AEW WrestleDream

With his full-time career now over, Bryan Danielson is set to undergo an MRI that will help determine his next steps.

Danielson’s full-time career in the ring ended when he lost the AEW World Championship to Jon Moxley at WrestleDream last Saturday night. Dave Meltzer reports in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that Danielson will now be having an MRI to decide if he needs neck surgery.

“As far as what happens with Danielson involves the state of his neck. He is going to have an MRI done to see the damage. He had an MRI done not too long ago and it showed damage all the way down his neck. What happens next depends on if the level of damage is the same as it was or if it has worsened, and if [so], by how much. The hope is that he won’t need surgery and can heal up strong enough with stem cell treatment therapy. But if not, he’ll have to undergo surgery. If or when he can return to the ring depends on how well all of this goes,” Meltzer wrote.

“They and he had always said regarding this match that it would be the end of his full-time career, and not the end of his career.”

Danielson said before WrestleDream that he didn’t know if he would wrestle again if he lost to Moxley.

“Will I ever wrestle again once I lose the title? I don’t know,” he told Shawn Garrett of KIRO 7 News in Seattle. “My heart says yes because I love wrestling, but I’ve put my body through a lot to get to the success that I’ve had. At some point — what is it? — You have to know when to hold em, know when to fold em.”

Meltzer notes that the original plan was for Danielson to lose the AEW World Championship to Darby Allin at WrestleDream, but the direction changed “with the idea of putting as much heat as possible on Moxley and the [Blackpool Combat Club] in an attempt to jump-start interest in the promotion.”

Moxley ended Danielson’s full-time career in violent fashion at WrestleDream and then delivered a mission statement on Dynamite this week, declaring that he hates what AEW has become and promising to “burn down the forest to plant a new one.”

“What is the new paradigm? It’s very simple — you work for me now,” Moxley warned the AEW roster.