*Note* This is a small part of an interview with Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque that will be published in full later on today.

So Daniel Bryan’s return on Tuesday. By now everyone knows his road back and how much it took for him to get cleared, so when I saw him get physical in the ring for the first time in two years, I was obviously thrilled, but also incredibly nervous because of his medical history and scared due to the nature of the business. What was running through your head as you watched that segment unfold on SmackDown?

“So one thing that I have learned as an athlete over all of these years is that you have to learn to trust the process of the medical professionals. When I came back from my quad injury, there was a point in time when they told me that, ‘You’re good to go,’ but still in your mind you’re wondering ‘should I be tentative? Should I not do this, should I not do that?’ You second guess things and you have to realize that you have to get that out of you. You’re either good or you’re not. There’s no, ‘oh you’re pretty good, you should be OK!’

If you approach it and say, ‘I gotta do this and protect this and I have to do this differently than I have before,’ and I’m not talking about changing your style, I’m talking about just protecting yourself and not committing yourself 100 percent. If you do that, you’re almost insuring yourself if something were to go wrong.

My hope was that Daniel would go all out. Having seen him at various points of his journey back, I really wasn’t afraid of the fact that he was going to hold back because I had already seen him at that level. It was emotional watching it. It was exciting watching it. I was thrilled for him.

Am I a little nervous? Yeah, that’s the human part of it, but I have to trust the medical people to say we don’t believe it’s in your best interest physically to do this anymore and some of the most painful things I’ve ever had to do in this business is look talent in the eye and tell them that.

To be able to trust the medical professionals and have them say that with everything that has happened and where we are right now that he can do this again is awesome. It really is awesome. For him as a human being to have a second opportunity at his dream when he thought it was gone is a rare thing.

That’s going to make a lot of people out there go, ‘Well what about me?’ But that’s a rare, rare, rare, rare thing and I don’t know how many people will ever get that opportunity.”

Twitter: @ScottDargis