Daniel Bryan has reportedly been cleared to return to action after being absent from WWE programming since WrestleMania 35.
According to Dave Meltzer in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Bryan could be written back into storylines on SmackDown LIVE as early as next Tuesday. He was cleared to return last Tuesday at SmackDown LIVE.
Meltzer previously reported that Bryan was dealing with an undisclosed injury that WWE is keeping “closely guarded” and added that it is still unknown what the injury was outside WWE circles. Meltzer said last night on Wrestling Observer Radio that the assumption on Bryan’s injury among many people in the company is that he sustained a concussion during his match with Kingston at WrestleMania.
With Bryan’s history of concussions and WWE not publicly disclosing them, signs are pointing to that. While Bryan sustaining a concussion is a cause of concern, Meltzer feels it’s a positive sign that it took over a year for it to happen. Another positive sign is Bryan getting clearance in a matter of weeks.
Bryan has talked about his desire for a lighter schedule to cut down on potential injuries and not be away from home as much.
“I’ve been talking to WWE about maybe doing a lighter schedule because when we first starting talking about this, when I sent that, when Vince [McMahon] told me to send the letter to Dr. Maroon, he said for me to say, ‘for a limited schedule,’ like ‘revised concussion protocol for a limited schedule,’ so then, they clear me and I’m just on everything! I was just like, ‘I wasn’t expecting this!’” Bryan said last June during an interview with Gorilla Position.
“Anywhere between 50 and 100 matches a year, to me, [is ideal] because one of the doctors that cleared me at Barrow Neurological [Institute], Dr. Javier Cárdenas talked to me. He said, I think when he cleared me before in 2015, he said, ‘With all the stuff that [Bryan] had done on top of that, like, before I thought we dotted our Is and crossed our Ts, but the stuff you’ve done on your own, you’ve really scratched a big hole over the I and ripped, marked, through the T.’ And so, he said, ‘Just so you know going forward, the less exposure you have, and this is for anybody whether you have a history of it or not, the healthier you’re going to be.
“So I was thinking, ‘Oh, I’ll do 75 to 100 matches a year or whatever it is.’ And now it looks to be way more than that, so if I were to change something, it’d be like I’d kind of like to do less, be away from home [less]. Like, for me, it’s not about wrestling less. It’s like I don’t want to be away from home this much.”
