The AEW All Out pay-per-view event from the United Center in Chicago, Illinois, featured Bryan Danielson vs. Ricky Starks in a Strap Match, but this wasn’t the original match that AEW President Tony Khan had in mind.
Instead, Starks’ original opponent was CM Punk, with whom he has been feuding recently. When Punk was suspended and later fired for his actions at All In, AEW needed a replacement, and they found Danielson, who had been out with a surgically repaired arm since June.
At the AEW All Out media scrum, Danielson answered questions from the media, noting that he got through the match because he was carried by Starks and put over the young star. Danielson also mentioned how he did nothing with his injured arm.
Danielson was supposed to return in mid-September, but he returned earlier.
Fightful Select reports that AEW was confident in their backup plan for Starks, who wasn’t informed of the opponent until Saturday because Danielson had been cleared in the previous week.
AEW also has an opponent in mind for him at WrestleDream.
While speaking to media after the show, Bryan commented on being cleared to return sooner than expected:
““So, the arm feels great. Nigel McGuinness has succinctly pointed out, many times at this point, that we have 206 bones in our body. 205 of mine are perfectly OK. And even the 206, is almost impenetrable at this point. But we have great doctors here and there’s certain magic to pro wrestling. I’ve talked about this before, magicians don’t necessarily reveal their secrets. But because we have the best fans in the world here at AEW, people are legitimately concerned for my safety so I will pull back the curtain a little bit in this.”
“There was a lot of smoke and mirrors tonight. And I was in no danger whatsoever, other than the regular danger that you can get in doing a hiptoss. But I didn’t even throw a strike with my right arm and I don’t think anybody noticed. There are all of these things that you can do to avoid — and especially where I’m at in the healing process. We talked to not just Dr. Sampson, who I love and we went through every single thing in that with him — but we talked to the surgeon, who has no interest [in if I wrestle on this pay-per-view or not]. He’s just giving us his recommendation. All of that was talked through with doctors, so I felt very comfortable doing it. The company felt very comfortable doing it, our doctors and outside doctors felt comfortable doing it. So yeah, here I am and I feel great.”
You can check out the complete press conference below:
