The big news story over the last week was the status of Daniel Bryan following his loss to WWE Universal champion Roman Reigns on SmackDown, where Reigns told Bryan he would have to leave the blue-brand forever if he were unable to dethrone the Tribal Chief. It later surfaced that Bryan’s contract with WWE had officially run out, making him a free agent in the now very competitive pro-wrestling circuit.
According to PW Insider, WWE has not held back on mentioning Bryan on their programming despite him not officially having a new contract. The report states how this differs greatly from the CM Punk situation back in 2014, where WWE put a lockdown on his name being mentioned due to the now public circumstances of his departure. Bryan was named on this past Wednesday’s episode of The Bump, on the After The Bell podcast with host Corey Graves, as well as multiple times by Reigns on last night’s throwback edition of SmackDown.
While there is still speculation of Bryan appearing somewhere outside of WWE, there is definitely still a chance he signs a new deal with his former company, as he has expressed an interest in working a lighter schedule and being more involved in backstage activities. In a recent interview he mentioned how current AEW and IMPACT world champion Kenny Omega “thought about pro-wresting in a unique way,” even teasing fans of a potential showdown with the Cleaner somewhere down the line.