Bryan Danielson’s All In plans looked set, but he won’t be cleared

After Forbidden Door, when Bryan Danielson thought the broken arm he suffered during his main event victory over Kazuchika Okada would only sideline him for about eight weeks, the American Dragon took a few shots at his legendary Ring of Honor foe Nigel McGuinness at the post-PPV media scrum.

McGuinness has been retired for more than a decade, and within wrestling has been focused on commentary gigs like his current one calling AEW Collision. But we’ve seen others get cleared for returns we didn’t think would ever happen — a list which includes Danielson. And during his appearance on the latest AEW Unrestricted podcast, Nigel said he’s healthy enough to wrestle his first match since 2011.

He also fired a few shots back at Bryan:

“The truth of the matter is, the only way I was going to come out of retirement was for a match against Bryan Danielson at Wembley Stadium. It was going to take something like that for me to come out of retirement, because I really value my job doing announcing and there are so many other guys on the card that are so much better than me and deserve those spots, but in the right situation, I’d be crazy to not be open to that possibility.

“Now, [Danielson] has gone and broken his arm. Let’s be honest. We all saw the x-rays, and one of those bones was perfectly okay. I don’t know how many bones are in the human body. He’s got all of them apart from one, does he really need time off? He’s sitting at home, taking a paycheck, digging those clams out of the sand. He could be in there wrestling me. To be perfectly honest, he’s probably a bit scared.”

Sounds like the perfect set-up for Danielson to respond that, actually he will be cleared by Aug. 25 when AEW holds All In at Wembley in London. But it also sounds like Nigel already knew what Dave Meltzer wrote in the latest Wrestling Observer Newsletter:

Bryan Danielson got his surgery for his broken arm on 7/3 and at the time was told three months before he could return, although it’s possible he could beat that by a week or two.

That lines up with what Tony Khan said earlier this week, and would mean Danielson is certainly missing All In, and All Out a week later in Chicago. It also makes doing anything for Sept. 20’s Grand Slam edition of Dynamite & Rampage unlikely.

Which is a bummer, but Bryan’s health is the most important thing. And hey, if Nigel feels good now, presumably he’d still feel good next year if AEW returns to Wembley. Right?