Originally published at Bryan Danielson on wrestling part-time in future: “I can’t envision ever stopping”
Bryan Danielson has said he will continue to wrestle long after his last year as a full-timer is over.
Danielson was speaking on the Maggie & Perloff radio show on Friday.
Cohost Maggie Gray put it to Danielson that 2024 would see his “last dance.” She asked him whether he could see himself still performing at 74, like Ric Flair.
Danielson responded:
I could picture myself out there, and when I say this is kind of my last — this is my last year as a full-time wrestler. I can’t envision ever stopping, and I think Ric Flair sees it the same way.
It’s such an incredible experience to go out there and do it. I’m getting to the point where my body’s breaking down a little bit. I can’t do it full-time at the level that I would like to, but I would still like to get out there every once in a while and just do it.
It’s one of my life’s passions, you know what I mean? It makes me feel alive. So, yeah, I mean, I could see myself out there at 74, just being like, “Ahhh! Come on!”
Danielson also offered an update on his eye injury. He said that the bones were healed but he still had some double vision, which is why he has been wearing an eyepatch.
He added that he may have to wear the patch, a protective mask, or maybe both, for his AEW Continental Classic match on Saturday’s episode of Collision.
I’m going to have to talk to the doctors tomorrow. The benefit of wearing the eye patch is that, so the bones are completely healed, but the benefit of wearing the eye patch is I still have like a little bit of double vision in the thing, and wearing the eye patch — like, if I take the eye patch off, I tend to get a little bit dizzy because of the motion of the eye.
So the eye patch stops me from getting dizzy, but they may want me to wear a protective mask. So I don’t know. We’ll see tomorrow [Saturday]. I’m going to see myself…Yeah, it may end up being a face mask with eye patch on top of the face mask [laughing]. You know, when you see the NBA players, when they have the face mask, they get hit it a lot with the elbows, you know, as they’re blocking out and all that kind of stuff…I might just have to take a Sharpie over my eye [laughing].