Bryan Danielson reached the height of his AEW run last year when he won the AEW World Championship in the main event at All In. He later announced that his full-time wrestling career would be over when he dropped the belt.
In October of 2024, Jon Moxley defeated Bryan to become the new AEW World Champion at WrestleDream, and The American Dragon has not returned to the ring since then.
During a recent appearance on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Bryan Danielson was asked if he’s retired, and he noted that while he doesn’t consider himself fully retired he’s not the performer he used to be.
“I hate the R word because I was forced to retire before. So I never consider myself fully retired. This is how I think, and this is how a lot of wrestlers think, Well, I think I could do this in this situation, if needed, or called upon, or whatever it is. But effectively for the Bryan Danielson that I used to be, yeah, that guy doesn’t exist anymore.”
Even though Bryan Danielson isn’t currently active in the ring he is still making regular appearances on AEW programming as he joined the commentary team a few months ago.