The Superlink Party: Daniel Bryan’s Emotional Return, Bayley’s Weird Dream Searches

In today’s edition, we talk a little bit more about Daniel Bryan’s return, the Ultimate Deletion, and Bayley’s dreams. No that is not a joke.

Every day on Daily DDT, I’d like to highlight the major stories in professional wrestling from the previous day. Yes, there will be a heavy WWE slant, and that’s because they are the biggest company, therefore they have the most content to talk about. Feel free to skip those parts and move around to other sub-headings.

Daniel Bryan’s Return

I know this happened on Tuesday night, but, damn, I’d like to talk about this every day for the rest of my life. When it was first announced that Daniel Bryan was cleared, I wrote a piece about how I have mixed emotions about his return, simply because I’m frightened by the long-term implications that several concussive blows have on an athlete. CTE is a huge problem in combat sports, and it’s already been linked to professional wrestlers in the past.

But when Bryan started flying around the ring against Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens, all those doubts and fears dissipated. Here he was, one of my heroes, moving around in jeans ten times better than most of the roster could in tights. The reaction that Bryan received from the crowd will give me chills when I watch the clip five years from now, and because he’s run through all the tests and knows the risks better than anyone on the Internet could ever care to explain to him, I’ll just leave this:

Welcome back. I friggin’ missed you.

Podcast One Drops Vince Russo

I was tempted to make a cheap joke as a segue saying, “But you know who won’t be missed?”. Instead, I’ll just make an abrupt and uncomfortable transition to talking about one of wrestling’s most abrupt and uncomfortable people.

To be honest with you, I could care less about Vince Russo the booker or whatever. I never worked with him, and I was never backstage. Heck, I’ve never even met with the guy or interacted with him online, so I can’t say anything personal about him.

What I can say is that some of his views are very, very problematic.  First of all, there’s this:

Yikes.

He’s also made homophobic comments and sexist comments, including the one transcribed below by Pro Wrestling Sheet:

"“Woman wasn’t created first. The man was created first. The woman was created second. I believe that’s how God wanted the pecking order to be.”"

Despite these comments, Russo’s podcast, “Castrating The Marks”, has been quite successful and remained on Podcast One. That is, until yesterday.

Russo has a large, hardcore following, and they have recently taken to sending death threads and making other unsavory remarks to Erica Steiner, who is the girlfriend of wrestling reporter Ryan Satin. Both Satin and Russo have had beef for quite some time, and while Satin tweeted that he tried to “squash” it, that clearly hasn’t happened.

Because Russo failed to tell his followers to stop harassing Steiner, who is a producer for TheBlast.com, Podcast One decided to drop Russo’s podcast from their network. At one point, Russo was trending on Twitter yesterday, so his popularity and prominence in the wrestling community will allow him to find another place for his podcast to be hosted.

After hearing the news that Podcast One dropped him, Russo released an hour-long video responding to the events.

In my opinion, Russo doesn’t seem to understand that what he did was wrong and that he has a responsibility to discourage his listeners from harassing individuals, regardless of whether or not he likes them personally. All he had to do was say, “Hey guys, stop being gross,” and instead, he chose to double down. It’s yet another example of Russo representing the wrestling media poorly, causing someone undue stress and potential harm, and alienating both wrestling fans and writers.

He has also hurt the people under his “Brand”, and I can tell you that I personally decided to drop a podcast appearance with a host who recently joined his podcasting “family” because of Russo’s actions.

Sadly, Russo being dropped by Podcast One doesn’t change the fact that his fans are going after Erica, and it also doesn’t mean that this battle is over for all parties involved.

Yes, The Ultimate Deletion Was A Success

Hopefully the “Lake of Reincarnation” will do Bray Wyatt some good, but even if the “Consumer Of Terrestrial Beings” ends up being screwed again, at least the “Ultimate Deletion” figures to be a big part of Matt Hardy’s legacy going forward.

You see, it seems like Vince McMahon didn’t buy into this whole segment. Even though he brought in Matt, brought in Jeremy Borash, and made this match with Wyatt the main event of the most recent episode of Raw, there were signs of buyer’s remorse. Firstly, Michael Cole didn’t exactly sound confident that this would be a hit, and since he’s fed lines by Vince, that means, by proxy, Vince wasn’t convinced that the Ultimate Deletion would be well-received. Additionally, despite the fact this was the main event of the show, it was cut from the shortened version of Raw released on Hulu the following day.

However, the audience spoke, and they spoke in numbers. During the show itself, the third hour of Raw held steady at around 3 million viewers. On YouTube, the videos have done well, and one of them is hovering at around 2 million views right now. It also trended on Twitter for quite some time on Monday night.

WrestleZone’s Nick Hausman reports that while it was true that Vince initially feared that the Ultimate Deletion would be perceived as a failure, the WWE has changed its tune after looking at the raw data.

It shows that the “implicit vote” of a view can make a huge impact. Now go and click on some of our articles you ungrateful chipmunks! (Just kidding, that was incredibly offensive to chipmunks everywhere, and I apologize to Chip’n Dale, who probably run a successful law firm of the same name with Muhammad Hassan’s deceased lawyer as a client).

Women Of Honor Tournament

For those of you keeping up with the Women of Honor Tournament, ROH’s YouTube channel uploaded the most recent match, which you can watch above. I love that ROH has teamed up with Stardom to help up the quality of the matches in this tournament, because Stardom truly does offer the best women’s wrestling on the planet.

This match between HZK and Mayu Iwatani certainly qualifies, and “short but sweet” comes to mind here. The finish was wonderfully done, and there were some brutal moves here. Do yourself a favor and watch it, and just know that the winner gets to face the talented Deonna Purrazzo, who is one of Ring of Honor’s brightest stars.

Awesome Fan Art

It speaks for itself.

Pat McAfee Is Getting A Push

Although Pat McAfee was a darn good punter for the Indianapolis Colts, the man has unsurprisingly made an even bigger name for himself as an entertainer ever since joining Barstool Sports. After helping Aleister Black avoid Adam Cole’s chair fetish at an NXT Live Event, McAfee will take things to the next level by joining the kick-off panel at NXT TakeOver: New Orleans during WrestleMania weekend.

The jury’s out on whether or not he’ll be a better kick-off panelist than Samoa Joe, who was brilliant at NXT TakeOver: Philadelphia, but he’ll undoubtedly be entertaining and good for a chuckles. McAfee tweeted that he’s signed a contract with WWE.

And hopefully he brings out the “Bad Guy Dance” again.

Bayley’s Dreams

Bayley and Sasha Banks have been going all out on social media in this feud, and astute followers have picked up on even the less obvious of clues, such as Sasha’s “likes” on Twitter.

For the most part, Bayley has spent her time posting Paramore songs as she deals with this break-up, but she did post a tweet with screenshots of Google searches about interpreting her dreams.

I love this feud, and I love all the little things these two are doing to make it feel special despite the fact that they’ve had an insanely good story before. Please give these two a singles match at WrestleMania with time to wrestle. I’m OK with the sleep I lose.

Also, any Freud disciples willing to psychoanalyze Bayley? On second though, please don’t. Reading Bayley’s tweet was more than enough for me.

What I’ve Been Reading

I’d like to use this daily piece to highlight some great wrestling-related content around the web.

So if you have anything that you’d like to see linked here, please send @FanSidedDDT a direct message on Twitter. If we believe the content is relevant and interesting, we’ll link to it (but we’re very liberal when it comes to defining both of those words). These can also be tweets, podcast links, fan art, etc.

Professional wrestling is so beautiful because it captures our emotions and screws with our minds, especially when our favorites turn heel and embark on a journey of character discovery. This piece from Harmony Cox about Sami Zayn is sincerely one of the best wrestling pieces I’ve ever read. Do yourself a favor and read all of it.

Bleacher Report’s Kevin Berge ran down the list of winners and losers from SmackDown Live, and it was awesome seeing Natalya on the “winners” list. She and Charlotte Flair got plenty of time to work, and they put together their best main roster match to date. There were loads of great spots, and Natalya always reminds me that she’s one of the best whenever she gets a chance to show it. Now that she’s clearly THE veteran on the roster, those days are few and far between, but they are still wonderful when they happen.

I see a lot of contempt for Charlotte Flair on social media, and I just don’t get it. Although it’s easy to hate on someone who has a famous father and wins a lot, Charlotte has certainly earned what she’s received. The Blonde Pipebomb Shell has a fantastic overview of Charlotte’s story so far in WWE, as she takes you through Charlotte’s career and accomplishments. Hopefully this gives you an appreciation for her journey so far, and it will certainly be exciting to see what the remainder of 2018 holds for “The Queen”, who will put her SmackDown Women’s Championship on the line against Asuka in what will be a monumental WrestleMania match.

Next: WWE SmackDown Grades And Analysis

If you are looking for an update on just how often Daniel Bryan will wrestle now that he’s been cleared, sit tight. Fightful.com’s Sean Ross Sapp recently reported that while WWE “isn’t ready” to determine his schedule going forward, Bryan has “no restrictions” on him. That can be observed by the bumps he took in his first night back, namely the powerbomb on the apron.