Daniel Bryan spoke with the New Jersey Devils’ All-Access Podcast and spoke about his quest to receive medical clearance to return to the ring. “So I’m in the process of trying to get cleared,” Bryan said. “But it’s a tricky situation. It’s an interesting situation to watch because ten years ago it would have been completely different and ten years from now it will be completely different because what it is is a concussion issue….
“And so one of the things that’s interesting is where will the testing take us, because right now the issue is they look at me and say, ‘You’ve had X number of concussions and you’ve had post-concussion seizures in the past and because of that we won’t allow you to wrestle.’ But all of my testing is excellent. All of my MRI scans, my neuropsychological testing, my EEGs, all that kind of stuff is excellent. So now they are pushing it forward. There’s better level testing.
“So now I’m doing these things called nuclear spec scans of my brain which is showing where the oxygen is going, how my brain is actually working in real time. And my first scan is saying, ‘Okay, you’ve got the brain of about anybody who has played college football.’ But not anybody who has had a lot of impact, but just played college football. And now I did some treatments that are hyperbaric oxygen therapy thing and now it’s way better than that. It’s as if I was a guy who played a couple years of high school football… And they think with 80 more treatments, which I’m on the way to completing, my brain will look like someone who has never played in a contact sport in their entire life. I’ve passed all of my current testing, but because of my history they’re afraid of what could happen. And so it’s a liability issue so that’s kind of the battle and you can see both sides of it.” Listen to the full interview at NHL.com. [Thanks to Blake Reilly of Theblakeandsalshow.com/]
Powell’s POV: Bryan said there is an 85 percent chance that he will wrestle again, and a 15 percent chance of WWE clearing him, and “there’s a good chance” he’ll wrestle elsewhere if they do not clear him. The encouraging thing is that he also said the reason he’s leaving a 15 percent chance of not wrestling again is that if his testing shows he will not be healthy going forward then “sorry, wrestling, baby comes first.” It’s great to see how driven he is to get back in the ring, yet even better than he’s willing to call it a career if medical testing says he should not return. By the way, the interview was conducted in part by Arda Ocal, who was known as Kyle Edwards during his WWE play-by-play run.
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