Daniel Bryan Receiving Medical Clearance Brings More Questions Than Answers

Like most wrestling fans, I have always felt a sense of innocent joy whenever I decide to watch a Daniel Bryan match or promo. But now that he’s been cleared by the WWE to wrestle again, a creeping sense of potential guilt emerges from deep inside of me at the thought of gleefully accepting the in-ring return of someone who may run the risk of slowly destroying himself.

I make it no secret that protecting athletes against head injuries is something I feel passionate about, and it’s something I believe fans play a critical role in. Back when I covered football, I would always wince when a player was praised by the fans for “toughing it out” or, worse yet, admonished for sitting out plays after taking a huge hit. See, the fans set the tone for the type of risks we’re willing to accept in the sports we watch, because, ultimately, we fuel the success of products like football and professional wrestling.

In pro wrestling, we’ve already seen how serious head injuries can be. Last year, three former pro wrestlers were diagnosed with CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy). In 2016, 51 wrestlers sued the WWE for hiding the long-term effects of head injuries. This is similar to the allegations that former NFL players have made against that league, and the accusers were met with a similarly dismissive response from the WWE.

This is the statement Wrestling Inc. received from WWE regarding that lawsuit:

"“This is another ridiculous attempt by the same attorney who has previously filed class action lawsuits against WWE, both of which have been dismissed. A federal judge has already found that this lawyer made patently false allegations about WWE, and this is more of the same.”"

Despite retiring on Feb. 8, 2016, due to his history of concussions and a recently discovered lesion, Daniel Bryan had been actively trying to return to the ring for months. This became clear last year in November when Bryan’s wife, Brie Bella, informed Chasing Glory podcast host Lillian Garcia that Bryan was traveling to different doctors in the hopes of getting more insight on to how he can make an in-ring return.

Transcription via Sky Sports’s Jefferson Lake: 

"“All these doctors are telling him he can wrestle, they don’t see what the issue is. I think WWE are looking at it and that’s why he’s been really vocal lately because he does have hope. They are willing to look at what the other doctors are saying.”"

In January of this year, Bryan told Sports Illustrated’s Justin Barrasso that if he weren’t cleared by WWE before WrestleMania of this year, he would assume that he’ll never wrestle for WWE again. Since Bryan had been mired in a main event storyline with Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, and fellow management figure Shane McMahon on SmackDown Live, this statement carried a great deal of weight.

Plus, because it occurred on a media outlet as large as SI.com, fans started to believe that this was an indication that Bryan could return to wrestling in 2018. They also realized that if Bryan weren’t cleared by WWE, it stood to reason that he’d take his talents to wrestle outside of WWE (which would potentially be a costly decision for WWE due to Bryan’s immense popularity and prodigious talent).

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Today before a pivotal episode of SmackDown Live just weeks before WrestleMania, the WWE officially announced that they have cleared Bryan.

The timing of the announcement is especially interesting, given the proximity of the announcement to the WWE’s biggest show of the year. Though the card is one of the most stacked in recent memory, as it will include the likes of Ronda Rousey and the Undertaker, throwing Bryan into the mix undoubtedly adds an extra “pop” (pun possibly intended).

It also answers two important questions regarding the current storyline he’s been in. Who is Shane McMahon’s partner at WrestleMania, and what is the payoff for this whole Shane/Daniel/KO/Zayn storyline?

However, it leaves a few more questions left to be answered. Firstly, will Bryan actually take bumps in that tag match? Secondly, will Bryan continue to wrestle for WWE going forward? Thirdly, how often will he wrestle? And fourthly, why did the WWE clear him today and not, say, months ago when he is said to have received the green light from several neurologists? After all, the WWE dropped the names of several influential neurologists in their announcement, and it’s hard to believe that Bryan never consulted with them during his ardent quest to achieve his dream of wrestling again.

For as much as I’d love to watch a once-in-a-generation talent go to work in the ring again and wrestle against the likes of Seth Rollins and Sami Zayn, you have to understand my cynicism and concern.

Bryan himself has said that he’s had 10 documented concussions during his wrestling career, and he also admitted in that same interview with ESPN’s Jonathan Coachman, who is currently employed by WWE as an announcer on Monday Night Raw, that he suffered from seizures following concussions but kept these episodes hidden.

However, Bryan stated that the impetus for his retirement in 2016, a lesion that was discovered, wasn’t as serious as once thought. Lesions are typically abnormalities in the brain caused by inflammation or cuts. But here’s the explanation he received from one of the doctors at Evoke Neuroscience who clarified that the “lesion” wasn’t actually a cut (transcript via Pro Wrestling Sheet, original interview on Edge and Christian’s “Podcast of Awesomeness).

"“Bryan explained, “I told him what happened and I said, ‘They found a lesion in the temporal-parietal region of my brain.’ He goes, ‘Wait, hold up, a lesion?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ And I don’t know what lesion means to you guys, a lesion to me means you have a cut. I have a cut on my brain. He goes, ‘No. Lesion, in medical terminology, is a very vague thing. It just means something is there. We don’t know what it is, so we call it a lesion in the temporal-parietal region of your brain.’”According to Daniel, it turns out all “lesion” meant was his reflexes in that part of the brain were slower compared to the athletes they usually tested. Compared to a normal person, Bryan was fine. “So I have average reflex time. I was like, ‘Oh no. I don’t think they understand. I’m just an average person, I’m not a real athlete!’ It’s just like, ‘Oh no, there’s been this huge, huge misunderstanding!’”"

As Pro Wrestling Sheet’s Connor Casey noted in the article, Evoke Neuroscience’s testing is not FDA approved. Out of the current members of their staff, only two are MDs with a background in neurology, and neither of them specialize in head injuries to athletes.

Daniel Bryan is very much on top of his health, as evidenced by the fact that he initially retired due to hearing this news. And although it turned out that he didn’t actually have damage in the temporal-parietal region of his brain, it’s still telling that he took the “false positive” (it wasn’t really a false positive, it was more of a misnomer since the people at the Evoke Neuroscience called an abnormality in a cognition test a “lesion”) seriously enough to retire.

However, in his desire to get cleared, he also told the E&C Podcast that he received Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Treatments (HBOT) at the Joe Namath Neurological Research Center.

The physician and principal investigator, Dr. Barry Miskin, told Bryan that “within 120 total treatments, so 80 treatments more, that my brain could get back to where if you looked at it from any other spectrum, you would think that I’d have never done any contact sports in my entire life”.

The issue with this claim is that there’s little evidence to suggest that HBOT would achieve this. Although there have been some promising results, there is nothing concrete. A 2003 evidence report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality found inconclusive evidence that HBOT is an effective treatment for brain injuries. A 2013 study by Cifu et. al found no significant effect of HBOT treatment on post-concussion syndrome.

All of this merely highlights the depths to which Bryan went in order to return to the ring, and he finally has his wish today. Now, it’s unclear exactly what will happen with Bryan going forward, but on some level, I am happy for him. His initial retirement technically shouldn’t have happened, but, well, there’s a reason why he felt compelled to retire. He’s had a history of serious injuries. And there’s a reason why WWE didn’t feel comfortable clearing him.

If something happens to Bryan, even though he’s been informed of the risks and has consented to resuming his wrestling career, it’s on the WWE’s watch. That’s especially scary for a publicly traded company when said wrestler is a fan favorite who is willing to do whatever it takes to put on the best match possible.

That’s why I fully expect the WWE to proceed with the utmost caution, and it’s why I’m very interested in seeing just how much he actually wrestles in this speculated Bryan/Shane vs. KO/Zayn match.

Amidst all this uncertainty and my selfish happiness at the thought of seeing Bryan gracing a WWE ring, I still feel scared. Even though I know that the risks of head injuries can be minimized greatly by proper care and through precautionary measures, I also know that athletes who suffer from repeated head injuries are at serious risk of suffering from CTE, which involves the slow death of brain cells.

If something were to happen to Bryan 20-30 years from now, I’d feel dreadful knowing that I may have been one of many adoring fans potentially pressuring him to return the ring. Bryan has a family, he has a steady position as a WWE legend, and he’s accomplished a lot in pro wrestling. But it’s admirable how much he loves the sport, and it’s just as hard to tell him, “No, you can’t do the thing that you love.”

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This is a long-winded way to say that I’m not sure how I feel about Daniel Bryan returning to the ring, and if I’m not sure as a fan, I wonder if others in WWE or around Bryan feel the same strange mix of happiness and anxiousness.