If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it was meant to be.

Truer words likely don’t exist to describe the situation surround World Wrestling Entertainment megastar Daniel Bryan and professional wrestling.

Bryan, the 35-year-old former WWE World Heavyweight champion, was forced to retire earlier this year at the height of his success and fame due to neck and head injuries.

The man who took the wrestling world by storm with his wildly popular “Yes” movement, delivered one of the most passionate, articulate and heartfelt retirement speeches inside the ring, fighting back tears, leaving behind the only world he’d ever known professionally.

The wrestling world was stunned. It wasn’t ready for life without the likable Bryan, whose real name is Bryan Danielson.

Neither was he, said Bryan during a telephone call to promote SummerSlam in Brooklyn, NY, this weekend,.

“I had to go out to Florida (to shoot Total Divas) and we’re in John Cena’s house for four weeks or whatever and there’s cameras just on you all the time,” Bryan said, adding that it was there that the toll that the stress and uncertainty around his livelihood came boiling to the surface.

“I just had this horrible mental breakdown,” he said. A lifelong outdoorsman and environmentalist, Bryan did what came most natural to him, he found nature to help him cope with his extreme sadness.

“That’s what I needed. I needed to get away from all of that and just get out to be by some trees,” Bryan said, emotion bubbling to the surface. “It’s hard for me. I don’t do really well in cities, which is crazy given that we’re flying in and out of these major cities every week. Brie (Bella, his wife) describes it as anxiety. And she would be accurate. I get this anxiety in cities and places like that. When you grow up in kind of a small town and when you grow up around a lot of green and trees and nature and that sort of thing, sometimes I think it’s a little mentally disconcerting to be around this concrete."

Even now, six months after pouring his heart out in front of thousands of fans and to millions more watching live, Bryan admits he hasn’t come to terms with the end of his career.

"It’s interesting because I guess the real answer is no, but it’s weird,” Bryan said when asked if he’s come to terms with how things have unfolded. “I don’t necessarily agree that there’s something wrong with me, right. The whole issue with concussions is so subjective.”

Bryan himself exhausted every avenue to keep wrestling, not for the money, or the fame, but for the sheer love of the business. You’d be hard-pressed to find a kinder, more articulate and passionate interviewee in the business than Bryan, who truly wears his heart on his sleeve.

He saw specialists, experts and doctors, underwent test after test, seeking clearance to resume his surefire hall of fame career. And he was cleared, by some, to continue wrestling.

“It’s hard because I was cleared by concussions specialists in Phoenix and cleared by concussion specialists at UCLA, like a team of doctors. And I kept trying to go to different places to try to get more and more people to clear me so that all of the evidence would be on my side,” Bryan said of building his own case to continue with WWE.

Throughout the entire process, he said, he was open and transparent with WWE, whose medical staff would not clear the then 34-year-old.

“I was completely honest with the WWE about all of it and the idea of, ‘Hey, if I get a bad test result, I let you know.’ ”

Ultimately, a test in New York City proved the final hurdle Bryan wasn’t able to clear, signifying the end was near.

“When I told them that I was taking this test in New York City, they said, ‘OK, well let us know the result.’ Well, the test hasn’t been peer reviewed, and I’m not saying it’s a bad test, all I’m saying is this is not something that they’re using the standard medical facilities,” Bryan added, his skepticism evident even today.

Alas, something showed up in the testing that WWE didn’t like.

“It showed a little something and then that becomes the automatic no and I’m just like ‘uhhh,’ ” the emotion of that moment still evident in his tone as he recounted it.

Bryan paused.

“It’s this heart-wrenching thing,” he said, his voice cracking ever so slightly. “It’s tough because we all get just this one life, right? And when you find something that you love as much as I love wrestling and then they tell you that you can’t do it anymore, it becomes really, really tough. And then it becomes really, really tough when now you’re around it every week. It’s just seeing your friends be able to go out there and do it and then you still can’t do it. It’s one of those things. I guess I kind of accept it, but I have a certain amount of melancholy with it."

The “now” to which Bryan refers is his return to WWE as first a commentator for the WWE’s recent Cruiserweight Classic tournament, where Bryan worked with the talent of commentating star Mauro Ranallo. That was quickly followed by Bryan being named the new general manager of the company’s repackaged SmackDown Live.

While fans are once again able to bellow “Yes! Yes! Yes!” again as Bryan’s ring entrance hits, there were months and months where the arenas fell silent of that familiar tune. And Bryan himself wasn’t sure what his own future held.

There was soul-searching. There was doubt. There was sadness. And lest anyone think that if Bryan had the chance to go back and do things differently, he would, you’d be sorely mistaken.

Bryan doesn’t work that way.

"A lot of people have said, ‘Oh, you need to change your style, you need to change your style, you need to change your style,’ ” he said. “And that is very true. Steve Austin had this great conversation with me, it was during the time when I was still trying to cleared from my concussion stuff.”

Austin was preaching the same thing to Bryan, suggesting maybe he alter his style, something Austin himself had to do following a career-threatening neck injury of his own in his prime. But Bryan’s style, which involved a lot of high-flying maneouvres, hard hitting and kicks, was what got him to the big dance in the first place, he said.

“I wouldn’t have gotten to where I was if I didn’t have that style,” Bryan said, conceding that there “probably was a point where I could have changed it sooner, like when I came back from my neck surgery.”

But, Bryan noted, it wasn’t his style that ended his career.

“Realistically, my style isn’t what put me out, I ended up taking a really hard hit to the head. It had nothing to do with my style.”

Bryan proceeded to give an example of his style, which can only be described as fearless and unrelenting.

“When I cam back from my neck surgery — and I have this really bad habit, it’s like I’m a glutton for punishment — I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to see how strong my neck is and to see if it can still take some of this stuff.’ ”

Bryan had one thing on his mind following his return, a match (no doubt at WrestleMania) with the beastly Brock Lesnar.

“What I really wanted was I wanted a match with Brock Lesnar, that was my thing,” Bryan revealed. “But I didn’t want to go into the match with Brock Lesnar (having) that be the first time I ever take a German suplex (following) my neck surgery. So, I wrestled Luke Harper and he German suplexed me on my head and everybody was like, ‘Oh my gosh, why did you do that?!’ ”

Simple, Bryan said. It’s his style.

“It’s because I have this mentality of, ‘Well, I don’t want to go in there against Brock knowing he’s probably going to give me one zillion German suplexes and not having taken a German suplex before and not having known that my neck was going to be ok.’ ”

Daniel Bryan didn’t do anything at half speed. It’s up for debate whether that was the best decision he could make, but no one can question his devotion to business. He literally gave everything he had to wrestling. In hindsight, Bryan admitted when pressed, if he had it to do all over again, he would change very little.

“Really, there are a few minor tweaks that I would make, probably, but on the whole, I needed to wrestle a certain style to even get noticed by WWE, and then once I got to WWE, I needed to wrestle a certain style to break kind of that glass ceiling of where they thought that I should be. So I wouldn’t do much different, I don’t think."

Not only was Bryan done with wrestling as a career, there was a brief time when he couldn’t even face the idea of even being around his first true love. Would the urge to climb into the ring be too much? Would the business seduce him again? So Bryan walked away from wrestling, briefly it would turn out, to collect his thoughts and think about his future.

But Daniel Bryan’s heart belonged to wrestling. He knew it, and WWE knew it. Bryan re-emerged in WWE to be part of the Cruiserweight Classic, a tournament that held special meaning for him, himself having been a cruiserweight his whole life and someone who had to scratch and claw his way to WWE.

"The Cruiserweight Classic thing, to me, has been so much fun,” Bryan said of the tourney. “That’s been rewarding for me. I feel like I’m really contributing to the product, contributing to helping people and working with Mauro Ranallo is literally just the best,” Bryan said of the Canadian-born commentator. “For somebody who hasn’t done much commentary before, he makes it so much easier for me to sound good. If I wasn’t in there with Mauro, nobody would be saying ‘You’re a great commentator.’ Just because Mauro sets me up so well and when you know the intricacies of commentary and you realize at how good he is at doing that for me and for other people, it brings you a new respect for what he does. That has been a ton of fun.”

As for the role of GM on SmackDown, Bryan said that role comes with a lot of mixed emotions, again related to not being able to climb inside the ring and do what he does best.

“Doing the GM stuff has been fun, but it’s also been hard. I think one of the really hard things for me was sitting out there, I’ve had to sit out there for two matches, and when I come out, I get this great reaction and then I just sit in a chair and watch other people wrestle. It’s just like, ‘Oh, come on, man,’ ” he said with a hearty laugh, adding he’s also enjoying taking in part in the post-SmackDown show Talking Smack. “There are parts of it that are really fun and there are parts of it that are really hard."

This weekend, Bryan will find himself in Brooklyn, at the Barclays Center, as part of SummerSlam, the WWE’s second biggest event of the year. It summons up mixed emotions: excitement for those who’ll make memories, and memories of his own SummerSlams past.

"My favourite for myself at SummerSLam was the 2013 SummerSlam,” Bryan offered. “I wrestled John Cena in the main event and that was the biggest moment of my career up to that point. Being able to be out there with John, and SummerSlam, other than WrestleMania, it’s our biggest event of the year, so being put in that spot of main event an that sort of thing was really special to me. That was my personal favourite moment."

Asked about the main attraction at SummerSlam, Seth Rollins versus Finn Balor for the company’s new WWE Universal Championship, Bryan admitted he’s happy for both competitors.

"I’m really excited for Finn Balor, and for Seth Rollins. I’ve known both those guys for a long time,” he said, adding that Balor paid his dues in NXT but that his big push coming at SummerSlam says a lot about the belief WWE has in him.

“It’s crazy because Finn was doing really well in Japan and then he signed and he was down in NXT and he did great on NXT, but he was down there a long time. He was down there for like two years. He and I had talked and it was just one of those things: when is he going to get his shot to come up? And now he’s getting his shot and it’s in a big way, in this huge match in the second biggest WWE show of the year and I think that’s really great.”

The SummerSlam card, which also features Brock Lesnar versus the returning Randy Orton and WWE World Heavyweight champion Dean Ambrose versus Dolph Ziggler, is stacked, Bryan said.

“I’m really looking forward to SummerSlam for a lot of reasons. I’m looking forward to that and I’m looking forward to Dean Ambrose and Dolph Ziggler. I think Dean Ambrose has done a great job establishing himself as the guy on Smackdown, as much as you can within three weeks. And I’m really excited for John Cena and AJ Styles. AJ Styles is just so good and John always brings his A Game to big pay-per-view events. It should be a really, really fun show."

While his immediate future involves being back around the business he loves with all of his heart, fans don’t know exactly how close they came to that not being a possibility. Bryan admitted he almost walked away from wrestling entirely following his retirement.

“I thought in my mind that was kind of what I needed (to do),” Bryan said. “(WWE) called me and asked me to do the Cruiserweight Classic thing and I thought about it and I was like, ‘You know, that sounds really, really fun to me so I’ll do that. They didn’t ask me about the GM thing," he said with his signature laugh. “That was something that I was told to do."

Had WWE not reached out to Bryan, he had his exit strategy in the works.

"This summer I had signed up for a permaculture design course on Orcas Island,” he said. “It’s like a sustainable agriculture course. And I had signed up to go to (Arizona State University) in the fall to get a biology and ecology degree.”

His involvement in wrestling has put his other plans on hold, for now at least.

“With the GM of SmackDown thing, I could do more of the online courses and stuff but I don’t learn very well that way,” Bryan said. “And I wasn’t able to do my permaculture thing. That kind of threw off my exit strategy.”

In the end, Bryan is back doing the thing that makes him most happy, albeit not in the role that makes him happiest, but it’s a start.

“I need to find something that I’m just as passionate about as wrestling and I don’t know if this is it. I don’t know if going really environmental and sustainable if that will inspire the same passion in me that wrestling did, but I was going to try. And then they just sucked me right back in,” he added with a laugh.

Bryan paused, again, before perfectly summing up the internal struggles he’s been feeling since walking out to the ring that fateful night in February and breaking up with his first true love.

"It’s hard because I do, I love it. I love being in it and I love being around it, it’s just hard when you can’t do it."

If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it was meant to be.

jmmurphy@postmedia.com

twitter.com/Jan_Murphy

SummerSlam

What: WWE hosts SummerSlam at the Barclays Center.

When: Sunday, Aug. 21, 7 p.m. EST.

Matches

Brock Lesnar vs. Randy Orton

Seth Rollins vs. Finn Balor for the WWE Universal Championship

Dean Ambrose (C) vs. Dolph Ziggler for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship

John Cena vs. AJ Styles

Rusev (C) vs. Roman Reigns for the United States Championship

The Miz (C) vs. Apollo Crews for the Intercontinental Championship

Sasha Banks (C) vs. Charlotte for the Women’s Championship

The New Day (C) vs. Gallows and Anderson for the WWE Tag Team Championships

Enzo and Big Cass vs. Chris Jericho and Kevin Owens

Where to watch: Live on pay-per-view or on the WWE Network.