Daniel Bryan reported to have suffered career threatening concussion injury

Hot on the heels of Bret Hart's outspoken comments to SI.com that he believes Daniel Bryan will never wrestle again due to a similar scenario to how his career ended (Hart was forced to retire from in ring competition due to post-concussion syndrome, 15 years ago), Dave Meltzer reported in this week's Wrestling Observer Newsletter (subscription required, but highly recommended) that "Bryan's problem is concussion related" and "the issue is career threatening at this point".

Two months ago, reports initially surfaced that Daniel Bryan had suffered a concussion on the March 31st Smackdown tapings in a match with Sheamus and that this injury had directly led to Bryan being pulled from the remainder of WWE's European tour as a precautionary measure on April 15th.

Meltzer alleges that when this story broke "a bunch of [private] denials were made because evidently WWE wanted [it] under wraps" and went on to say that this was "probably because [Daniel Bryan] worked several matches after the injury in the match with Sheamus and there’s the lawsuit outstanding."

Actually not one lawsuit, but several, as Meltzer was clearly referring to the concussion lawsuits filed against WWE over the past nine months by their former performers Billy Jack Haynes, Big Vito, Adam Mercer, Luther Reigns, Russ McCullough and Ryan Sakoda, and Cassandra Frazier, the wife of the late WWE wrestler Nelson Frazier Jr. (aka Mabel, Viscera and Big Daddy V).

Given these rather damning allegations, we enquired with WWE for an official response. This was their terse reply:

"Daniel Bryan is not medically cleared to perform."

Make of that what you will, Cagesiders.