I want to talk to you today about one man. He used to be called Daniel Bryan. He’s sometimes called the American Dragon. Right now, he goes by his real name: Bryan Danielson.
At Wembley Stadium on Sunday, he won the main event of All Elite Wrestling’s flagship summer show: All In London. But this was more than just a showcase of “staged” fighting – combat as performance art – at its best. This was pure theatre that left 50,000 mostly adult fans, myself included, in floods of tears.
To fully understand why the evening was so emotional, and for me in particular, you need to go back a decade. I was a university student at the time and a friend of mine was getting very excited about something happening in WWE – the world’s biggest wrestling company. I hadn’t watched WWE since I was a kid and John Cena was delivering politically incorrect battle raps instead of headlining Hollywood movies, but I agreed to watch a few episodes to see what the fuss was about.
Daniel Bryan, at the time, was the man for the WWE audience. He had been a decorated performer on the independent wrestling circuit, fighting for tiny paydays in church halls, shopping centres, and pubs until he finally worked his way up to the big leagues. Now, he was ready for the top in the eyes of the audience, but the top brass at WWE weren’t so keen.
Like all of the best wrestling stories, this was part reality and part fiction. On screen, evil WWE boss Triple H was determined to hold Bryan down. Behind the scenes, execs had reservations about a scruffy-looking vegan who wasn’t even six feet tall becoming their top champion. He wasn’t exactly Hulk Hogan or The Rock, was he?
At WrestleMania XXX in April 2014, Bryan beat the odds to end the night in a shower of confetti as the WWE World Heavyweight Champion. The ultimate underdog has earned the ultimate victory and I was hooked on wrestling for life.
Daniel Bryan's WWE Championship win at WrestleMania XXX was a huge moment
(Credit: Megan Elice Meadows)
But then the story went sour. Over his 15 years as a wrestler, Bryan had accumulated lots of concussions and neck problems. In February 2016, Bryan told the world that, on medical advice, he would never be able to wrestle again. I’m watching that speech again as I write this and it’s as emotional today as it was back then.
Two years later, a miracle happened. doctors cleared Daniel Bryan to wrestle again. We got three unexpected years of Bryan in WWE until, in 2021, he crossed the floor and joined rival company AEW, formed in 2019. This opened up a whole new world of matches. Bryan Danielson, as he was now called, was able to embrace the more technical, athletic, hard-hitting side of wrestling from his early career rather than the family-friendly soap opera of WWE. He became the American Dragon again.
Fast-forward to this year. Danielson again told fans that his career was coming to an end. He had promised his daughter that 2024 would be his last year as a full-time wrestler, with all of the touring and time away from family that represents. Ahead of All In, he won the chance to fight AEW World Champion Swerve Strickland for his title. Danielson said that, if he lost, he would retire for good.
“Retirement” matches are a common storyline in wrestling and, usually, they’re rubbish. You know that actual retirement is unlikely. But in this case, fiction mingled with reality once again to create genuine stakes. We knew that Danielson intended to retire for real very soon. Could he hang up his boots for good at Wembley, in front of one of his biggest ever audiences?
The atmosphere in the stadium was electric as Danielson made his entrance to the ring, soundtracked fittingly by The Final Countdown. Strickland played the arrogant bad guy role perfectly, beating a seriously bloodied Danielson in front of his wife and children, who were seated at ringside. At one point, his daughter seemed to burst into tears. Real or performance? Nobody knew, and that’s the genius of wrestling as an art form.
(Credit: All Elite Wrestling)
Of course, the match was a near-perfect athletic spectacle, but the true power was in Danielson’s emotions. At one stage, he suffered a series of devastating kicks from Strickland, all while staring from the ring towards his family. He audibly shouted “I’m sorry” and “I love you” as the blows rained down. But Bryan wouldn’t admit defeat and, eventually, he was able to pin Strickland’s shoulders to the mat for a count of three.
The bell rung and Wembley erupted. 50,000 people shot to their feet and pointed to the sky, repeating Danielson’s famous “yes” gesture for what felt like hours of unbridled joy. Danielson’s family joined him in the ring as confetti showered down, just as it had a decade ago at WrestleMania.
When I started crying, I didn’t immediately know why I was so overwhelmed. But then I realised how important this moment was for me. I was witnessing perhaps the last great moment of a career that, on one night in 2014, cemented a passion for wrestling that I will hold for the rest of my life. I saw a man who was never supposed to reach the top of the mountain climb it again – this time in front of two children who weren’t even alive the first time around.
In 2014, I learned that professional wrestling at its best is a truly unique, incomparable art form. This weekend, it reaffirmed its power to me in the most potent way. And for that, as a great man said in his 2016 retirement speech, I am grateful.
The good news is that, if I’ve won you over with this article, you can watch this match for free along with the rest of AEW All in London on ITV4 on Thursday 29th August. It will then stream on ITVX.
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