The wrestling future of current WWE Smackdown General Manager Daniel Bryan is a hot topic these days because Bryan has done several interviews of late where he talked about wanting to wrestling again. Bryan retired in February 2016 due to suffering too many concussions in his career and being told he shouldn’t wrestle anymore.
Since then, Bryan has done tests to try to get cleared and has noted several times that his WWE contract expires in September 2018. That has led to Bryan teasing matches with guys like ROH Champion Cody Rhodes and saying he wants to wrestle WWE Superstar Shinsuke Nakamura. Bryan’s wife Brie Bella also thinks Bryan will find a way to wrestle again.
During an interview earlier this month, Bryan said there was a 85 percent chance he was going to wrestle again and a 20 percent chance that WWE would clear him to do it. The question then becomes if WWE did clear him, who would he face?
Bryan answered that question for us in a new interview with Sports Illustrated by singling out the current WWE Champion as the guy he wants to wrestle in WWE.
“One of my favorite guys to watch at WWE is AJ Styles. So, on the WWE stage, I would like to wrestle AJ Styles, only because I wrestled John Cena before.”
Two weeks ago on Smackdown, Bryan was in the Paul Heyman role as the advocate of AJ Styles and praised him heavily. Bryan even called him the greatest wrestler of this generation. A lot of fans probably think that label should go to Bryan. Clearly, if that match happened it would be one of the best matches WWE could ever do with their current roster.
Bryan also expressed his disappointment in never getting the chance to wrestle the man that trained him.
“I was really disappointed I never got to wrestle Shawn Michaels. He trained me and that was the one match I never got to have.”
The reason the match never happened is because Michaels was always in WWE when Bryan began traveling the world as a renowned practitioner of the sport. Then Michaels retired from WWE at WrestleMania 26 in 2010, while Bryan started with WWE in late 2009, and he just wasn’t at the level of a star to wrestle Michaels. It would have been amazing.
