All Elite Wrestling star Bryan Danielson has been ruled out of action after suffering a horror injury on Sunday night.
The former world champion, best known to WWE fans as Daniel Bryan before leaving the company to join Tony Khan’s rival promotion, was representing AEW against New Japan Pro Wrestling’s Kazuchika Okada in the main event of Forbidden Door.
The crossover show ended with the veterans, who are widely regarded as two of the best wrestlers in the world, facing off in a bona fide dream match.
However, things didn’t go to plan as Danielson suffered a suspected forearm fracture with 10 minutes of the bout still left to finish.
He pushed on through the pain to make sure fans went home happy and beat Okada to end the show on a high note, but he was visibly favouring his arm in the latter stages.
Speaking to media in a post show scrum, the so-called American Dragon – who came out to Europe’s Final Countdown for the first time in years – revealed the injury occurred when his elbow wasn’t in a safe space as his opponent hit a top rope elbow drop midway through.
It means Danielson won’t be in action as scheduled on AEW Dynamite this week, and he could be out of action for up to two months.
‘I was planning on wrestling on Wednesday this week. I don’t think that’s going to happen because, in this specifically, we think I fractured my right forearm with about 10 minutes left to go,’ he said.
‘Talking to our doctors, and I love the AEW medical staff and trainers, they think it’s going to be six to eight weeks for this specific injury.’
The Blackpool Combat Club star noted he actually started recreated his famous ‘Yes’ chants from his WWE days because he ‘couldn’t do some of the stuff’ he had planned for the match, so he settled on something he knew would ‘bring the crowd up’.
Last year, Danielson missed out on the first Forbidden Door show entirely due to injury, instead being replaced by a debuting Claudio Castagnoli – AKA Cesaro in WWE – against Zack Sabre Jr.
AEW Dynamite (Wednesday), Rampage (Friday) and Collision (Saturday) are available to stream weekly on Fite TV.
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