Brian Cage Reveals He’s Been Cleared To Return To In-Ring Action

An extensive update from Cage.

In 2025, Brian Cage underwent three knee surgeries. After not wrestling since March 2025, Cage has now been cleared to return to in-ring action.

He shared that information during his sit-down interview with Muscle and Fitness. The AEW talent stated that he had to go through a practice match to get cleared.

“I haven’t made my return yet. I just got cleared fully from everyone to be able to come back so then, there’s the hopes of that too, of like, okay, this is a perfect way to press restart and start new and come back and re-debut in a good way, in a new way, bigger way, whatever, and make the best of a bad situation…

I had the match to get cleared yesterday, and one of the things he wanted me to do was get up to just the second rope and jump off. The other guy, he moves and I just have to land on my feet… which is, like, nothing, right? But in my head, I go, can I do that? I’m like, I don’t know. It’s not that crazy but, you don’t know… I have post-surgery knees. I’m like, wait, can I? I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out, and yeah, I did it. It was totally fine.”

Cage added that his first day back in the ring, he was dealing with a strained back because of the box jumps he had been doing before stepping back into the squared circle.

“My first day back in the ring, I was rehabbing with my physical therapist while we were doing box jumps, all different jump stuff and I’m feeling good, and out of nowhere, for no reason, on a box jump, somehow I strain my back… Which makes no sense, right? I feel like maybe because I did so much glute and hamstring-heavy leg day beforehand, they were so sore so maybe there was just no… my posterior chain couldn’t absorb the impact so my lower back — I don’t know. It made no sense. It was like I did a crazy heavy deadlift… And now my knees aren’t killing me, but my back is killing me, and I’m like, ‘Well, I can’t not go,’ and of course it’s gonna happen now… So for the next two days, I had to go through that and my back was killing (me), holding me up. I’m like, ‘No, I’m still gonna go through, I’m still gonna push through…’”

During the conversation, Cage spoke about possibly changing his in-ring style. He stated that he’ll be dialing back on the aerial moves and saving those for bigger occasions.

“I mentioned this before, I surprisingly do a lot of different, real jumpy, athletic, aerial kind of situations. I’m definitely gonna be dialing back on those for a while. I mean, I don’t need to do ‘em. Everyone knows I can do ‘em, and that doesn’t mean I won’t do ‘em again, but obviously, I definitely don’t need to come back doing those right away. I wanna build some confidence and also, I would save it for a more important moment or a bigger match or whatever the case may be and I’m sure there’s some that I don’t ever do again. I don’t know. It is an opportunity, like I said, to start new and I could change the way I wrestle a little bit and get away with it too from how I look, and maybe I adapt that way and maybe it gets over more, maybe it gets better. I don’t know, so we’ll see.”

Further speaking about his potential return to AEW, Cage stated that he does not want his expectations to get too high.

“I can’t wait, and I don’t know when or where or even how. There’s a few different possibilities… It’s almost too much now because the longer it is and the more I get hyped up — I said I’m listening to music — I don’t wanna have too high of expectations. I’m almost worried about that, like, hyping myself up too much to be let down where it won’t be as good as I want it to be.”

Cage also revealed that he has new theme music that he’s looking forward to debuting.

“I still have this new entrance music that I’ve listened to so many times, that I can’t wait to debut because it’s so awesome, and I’ll just sit there in my car and I play it so many times where it almost gets me emotional because of the intense feeling that comes where I’m just envisioning myself and coming back through the curtain, hearing that music over the loud speakers, and the crowd reaction and maybe I’m overzealous thinking about this but it just starts to fill me up and get me so excited.”

Cage is a member of The Don Callis Family, and the last time he wrestled on AEW programming was on a March 2025 edition of Collision.

If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Muscle and Fitness with an H/T to Fightful for the transcriptions.