The American Dragon reveals how much longer he hopes to wrestle full time.
Bryan Danielson recently made an appearance to talk about a variety of subjects on One Fall with Ron Funches. Danielson discussed his plans for the future of wrestling throughout it and how his full-time career would stop when his contract with AEW expires.
No [I don’t have a dream scenario for my final match]… I would like to wrestle a match two weeks before I die, right? And to not know that it’s my last match. That would kind of be my ideal situation but I’m not gonna be a full-time wrestler for much longer [Danielson laughed].
That all said, I’m not gonna be a full-time wrestler for much longer. When my AEW contract is up, that’s pretty much me being done being a full-time wrestler but I like the way some people like Terry Funk and Jerry Lawler and those kind of guys do it where they do it for fun, right? And don’t do it all the time, they do it here or there, that sort of thing. But as long as I have fun doing it and as long as I experience joy doing it, it’s something I wanna continue doing for the rest of my life. Now, I wish my passion was something that didn’t cause me as much physical pain because for sure, if I was really gonna play the guitar which I could be if I put enough effort into it and if it brought me that kind of passion, I could be playing music or whatever literally the day before I die or whatever it is.
But as it is now, it’d probably have to be like at least two weeks, if not a little bit before the day that I die but you know, one of the things that was really brought to my attention when I was forced to retire was that you never know when your last match is gonna be… The last match that I had before I was forced to retire, I didn’t know that was gonna be my last match, right? And then, it was and I didn’t know it was gonna be my last match until two months later when they were like, ‘Okay, yeah, I don’t think we’re gonna let you come back’ and then it turned out to not be my last match. So I went for years thinking that was gonna be my last match and then it wasn’t and so, but just to be grateful and then you can even extrapolate that too, you don’t know when the last time you’re gonna see your kids is.
I saw my kids on Tuesday and there’s a chance if something happens to me, I may never see them again, right? And all that does, rather than be morbid about it is to not take things for granted. But every time that I get a chance to wrestle, it’s beautiful and every time that I get to wake up with my kids and make them breakfast and put them to bed at night is beautiful too and you can even extrapolate that to each individual breath, in it’s own way is beautiful and different.
I don’t have any vision of what I want my last match to be. I certainly don’t envision it being some epic match that everybody talks about. In my mind, it would be a match that I would just be doing at some local indie in front of 300 people that are just like, okay, I’m just going out and having some fun and it just turns out to be my last match [he laughed]. So that’s kind of how I envision it.
Bryan Danielson on One Fall
We’ll have to wait and see if AEW has anything special planned for The American Dragon in the coming weeks.
H/T to Ringside News
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