Bryan Danielson finally ran out of miracles. Regardless of one’s opinion of the man’s work, there’s no taking away just how unlikely it all seemed for Bryan Danielson. At every turn, he always felt written off before he even got the chance to really get going. From being the ROH World Champion by sheer process of elimination to being seen only as a mere potential TV workhorse in the WWE, all the way up to that first imposed retirement in 2016, Bryan Danielson’s career has played out as a series of unlikely, but well-earned successes. The pasty grappler from Aberdeen became the hero of WrestleMania, returned from retirement in way that would open the doors for multiple talents after him, and then chose his own path by jumping ship in 2021 to embark on his final run on his own terms.
It’s something of a miracle we have anything after 2016 at all. The damage Bryan’s body has accumulated through the years is no real secret to anybody anymore. The concussions, the various neck issues, even the history of seizures that he hid from WWE medical doctors upon signing with the company in 2009, these are all significant pieces of Bryan Danielson’s legacy both in and out of the ring. That’s why when he came back in 2018, then went on to show that he was still so great, so much greater than we might even have imagined from someone forced on the shelf, it really did feel like an impossible sort of gift.
For those that have followed Danielson for long enough, miracles just feel like the currency the man has traded in for decades now.
It was a heartwrenching thing to see the magic begin to run dry in real time. I mean this from a character perspective though some will very validly argue it’s a bigger thing than that but that’s for another time. As Jim Ross said at Grand Slam this year, Bryan Danielson will never enter another a pro wrestling match pain free, and one could get the sense of that just watching along. More of his matches became about selling, pushing past the damage he’s accrued over time, and even in control, he’s perhaps not quite as quick or as smooth as he might have been just a year beforehand. And then, ever since All Out, Jon Moxley has been determined to snuff out the final embers in as brutal a fashion as possible.
Mox accomplishes that in the title match at Wrestle Dream, by hook and by crook. Across a near half-hour match, Mox charges forward to exploit any weakness that he can find. That means attacking the neck in ways big and small, from table piledriver to biting the spine. He applies pressure in one of his most oppressive performances since the last CM Punk title bout, but here much more given to soaking in the crowd’s vitriol with a real malice to him. He plays cheap, allowing Marina Shafir to get her shots in all throughout the match, wearing down an already beaten and bruised American Dragon.
The odds are against Bryan Danielson–he’s hurt, he’s on the way out, the numbers are against him. And yet, we’re still waiting for that final miracle.
Jon Moxley wins the AEW World Championship when Bryan Danielson’s body finally gives out in a choke. Both men are brilliant enough that they gave us one heroic feat to latch onto–Bryan climbing the ropes with Mox’s entire body weight bearing down on him before crashing back to break the choke. Down to the last second, it looks like there’s one more miracle left as he’s reaching desperately for the ropes. But then the hooks sink in, and Jon Moxley becomes a 4-time champion.
What follows is one of the most devastating and exhilarating pieces of pro wrestling this decade.
Many people, myself included, came into this match prepared for the Danielson loss. But the angle that follows still left enough shock and awe that has clearly left a very deep mark on all that saw it. Mox’s Blackpool Combat Club swarm Danielson once again, Wheeler YUTA finally chooses his side by thwarting an attempted rescue by Darby Allin before reprising the plastic bag attack on Bryan Danielson, and a massive brawl erupts as indignant babyfaces including Jeff Jarrett, Orange Cassidy, Daniel Garcia, and Hook come to try and rescue our fallen hero.
This angle captures everything that this final AEW run has been about for Bryan Danielson.
Ever since he came back from his first retirement, but especially as soon as he jumped to AEW, Danielson has been working on borrowed time. Every match felt like a gift, because we weren’t supposed to have it to begin with. One imagines that Danielson himself felt that same pressure, and in 2024 he made the move to turn the hourglass himself. He called his shot, it’s his last full time year, and that year ends when he loses the AEW World Championship. But more significant than that was Danielson’s constant need to see beyond his own career’s mortality–the need to always give back, to leave the industry he devoted his life to just a little bit better than before. Bryan Danielson has always worked like he’s trying to create successors, and that has come through in his AEW run consistently. It’s the whole ethos behind the initial formation of the Blackpool Combat Club to begin with, to forge new talents under the fires of physical combat. It’s why the BCC use Danielson’s moves, adjust their styles ever so slightly to round out their games in ways that feel in direct correlation to Bryan’s own–Moxley most notably developing a much sharper focus on his ground game since linking up with Danielson.
And here, Danielson has one final gift to impart: his own destruction. That’s what all wrestlers gift to us, after all. Our entertainment, our care, our emotion in exchange for the steady breakdown of their bodies. On every level of pro wrestling, that’s the price that’s paid, the trade off between performer and fan.
So here, Danielson goes the extra mile. The most painful possible destruction of his body on this most important of nights. It all matters here. The attack of Moxley on the neck with those big bumps on the announce desk and the concrete. There’s the choice to do it in front of his home state crowd, dying before them when AEW’s spent much of their tenure as a promotion giving hometown heroes (face or heel) their big moments and celebrations. Danielson foregoes all the pageantry and fluff for some of the most powerful emotions that fuel pro wrestling instead: disgust, horror, and rage. Between happening in October and the visceral nature of the attack here, Danielson and Mox, and all the rest, weave something of a pro wrestling Halloween classic.
This angle especially stands out when it’s not even the most cruel piece of booking on the pay-per-view. Earlier in the night, Private Party came out rejuvenated and focused, got called losers by the champions, and then were proven losers in pretty decisive fashion. That’s a downer ending with nowhere to go–with the bad guys proven right and no reason to continue except for the booker’s hand moving things along. That’s not what this was. There’s a path forward from all of this, and it’s all very clear.
The nuance of all this is in the timing and the care. There’s so, so much that can be criticized about AEW and their booking, but for this particular choice, I have only praise. The subversion of the hometown hero trope directly contrasts the WWE consistent bastardization and choice to go for hometown heat for much of the tail end of Vince McMahon’s creative run, for example. But there’s also the direct contrast to another farewell earlier this year. For those looking for happy endings and feel good nights of pro wrestling, AEW already gave us that with Sting’s final stand at Revolution, and hell, they followed it up later in the year with Danielson’s own championship win in Wembley Stadium. AEW isn’t a company shy about giving fans big wins, and for all their faults I wouldn’t characterize them as a company built on simply prolonging heat for the sake of it. One need only look at the line up of pay-per-views AEW’s run this year to see this is true. The company does look to provide happy endings, but those really only mean as much as the crushing defeats.
So Bryan Danielson gives us one of the most crushing defeats of them all.
The final images of Bryan Danielson’s full-time career see him barely even visible. His face is obscured by the oxygen mask meant to revive him from the suffocation, doctors and concerned wrestlers crowd over his figure as he’s placed onto a stretcher and carried out of the ring. There’s no big speech, no final chance to sing along to Europe. The pay-per-view ends without Dragon even in the frame, instead we only see the horror on the faces of Darby Allin, Orange Cassidy, Daniel Garcia, and HOOK. Even here, Danielson and the AEW broadcast team and production, are telling us what it’s all for. Look forward, see what can and will be. Have some goddamn hope even as you mourn what was.
It’s Danielson’s final miracle: bridging his past, his present, and what could be the company’s future.
Of course it hurts.
Farewells always do when they mean something.
