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Well, a couple reasons. From a purely health standpoint, movement is health to a horse. A horse can't lie motionless to heal, he has to move in order to get good circulation to his legs and feet. The lower leg of a horse has almost no muscle, only bone and tendon, neither of which has a lot of blood flow. And it takes good circulation to heal.

Now, shift focus not only on the bad foot, but on the good feet and legs. Horses stalled and not able to move during a convelenscence risk laminitis, an acute circulation-related malady of the foot that, if it progresses, leads to pain so severe and irreversable the only humane thing is to put him down. So it's not just the bad foot, but the rest of his feet that suffer.

So the key will be to get him putting weight on it and walking as soon as is practical without damaging the mend.

Secondarily, from a soundness perspective, since horses are too big and too expensive to keep as big gimpy pets, normally a horse that will never have good movement again is put down. Movement is what we keep horses for, ordinarily. There is some fear that he will not be strong enough to stand on his rear foot well enough to breed. I don't share that fear. Since they fused the ankle, it should heel strong, even if it gives him a rather hitchy walk, he should do fine as a stud, if he can get through the healing process.

There's other mental and physical aspects to stall rest that can be harmful to the horse, but I've explained the big ones somewhat correctly I think.