Former champion Daniel Bryan's contract with WWE reportedly expired last week following his loss in the Career vs. Title match to Roman Reigns on the Friday night edition of SmackDown.
The news was first reported on Fightful's Patreon, but has since been confirmed by Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer, as well. Meltzer reports that while Bryan's contract expired on Friday, WWE "is pushing hard for him to sign a new deal."
One of the stipulations of the Universal Title match that Bryan lost to Reigns is that the former would be "banned" from appearing on SmackDown. Following the match, Bryan was moved to the "Alumni" section of WWE.com. However, supporting Meltzer's report that WWE is trying to retain Bryan, Fightful noted that, "We also hadn't heard of any particular farewells backstage as if he wasn't going to be around, although that doesn't mean they didn't happen privately."
Bryan was interviewed by TVLine ahead of the loss to Reigns, where he spoke about his future in wrestling. "I'm still trying to figure out what that looks like… I had a tag team match on SmackDown last Friday, and it was a lot of fun, but my neck was just wrecked," Bryan said. "I'm going to be 40 in May and my daughter likes to get on my shoulders to pick leaves from a Japanese maple in front of our house [and he couldn't this time due to the pain]. You get to that point where it's like, how long can I do this full-time and still be able to do those kinds of things with my daughter? What's the right balance between part-time and that sort of thing?"
Fightful also noted that Bryan might be interested in doing "unconventional work with and for WWE," which is consistent with what Bryan pointed out to TVLine about achieving the right work/family balance in any future wrestling work.
Bryan has been a WWE Superstar since 2009 (although he was briefly released in 2010). He was effectively retired from professional wrestling from 2015-2018 (officially retiring in February of 2016) due to medical issues related to multiple concussions and a brain lesion. He was medically cleared to return in 2018 and in November of that year he regained the WWE Championship. He has been a regular on SmackDown since 2016, serving as SmackDown's general manager during his retirement -- a title he relinquished when he returned to active wrestling.
Source: Fightful's Patreon, Wrestling Observer