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What's the story?
In an interview with The AV Club, Ring of Honor COO Joe Koff seems to have revealed exactly when the current SmackDown LIVE General Manager, Daniel Bryan's contract with the WWE expires.
In case you didn't know...
In recent weeks there has been a build-up of speculation about whether Bryan will leave the WWE when his contract with the company is up. This has been caused by Bryan's desire to return to the ring as an active wrestler, which he can't do in the WWE because WWE doctors haven't cleared him for in-ring competition due to his repetitive concussions.
Bryan himself has fanned the flames of these rumours by openly expressing his ambition to appear in hair vs mask matches in Mexico whilst doing a livestream Q&A with his wife Brie Bella.
The heart of the matter
During the interview with the AV Club, Joe Koff was asked the odds of ROH fans ever seeing Daniel Bryan (or Bryan Danielson) step foot inside of an ROH ring again. Koff revealed Bryan's contract expiry details:
"I’m not gonna give you odds, I wouldn’t even know how to set those. Bryan’s under contract with the WWE, from what I understand, until September 2018"
Bryan has openly put feelers out there stating he definitely wants to wrestle again, hence would have been in contact with ROH to try and secure an early deal for when his contract expires.
To make things more interesting, this revelation seems to make an innocent tweet Bryan sent to Cody Rhodes when he won the ROH title much more cryptic and tongue-in-cheek, with the tweet now appearing as a sly nod to when Bryan is actually allowed to return to ROH following the end of his WWE contract.
What's next?
I'm a big WWE fan, but for some reason, I'm actually quite excited about Daniel Bryan making a triumphant return to the ring in ROH in order to confront Cody Rhodes for outlasting Bryan's ROH title run. It seems that Joe Koff is quite excited about this prospect too, as he tells the AV Club.
"It would be a triumphant return. I think we would be the right place for him, the right fan appreciation, the right respect from the industry plus management plus everybody"
Author's take
Sadly it seems more and more likely that Daniel Bryan is going to be one of the next wrestlers, in a long line of profile names, to leave the WWE to return to the diversifying indy wrestling scene.
