Wrestling Rumor Reactions: Tye Dillinger And AEW, Kevin Owens’s WrestleMania Return

The world of wrestling rumors is a fast paced minefield, with WWE, Impact, NJPW, AEW and many more promotions constantly ushering in talent signing and releases, planning matches or other spectacles and shifting their backstage building blocks. Let’s see if we can make sense of what’s going on, shall we?

I’m Tom Colohue and these are your Wrestling Rumor Reactions.

Daniel Bryan vs Kevin Owens

Jeremy Botter, Senior Writer for Bleacher Report, had this to say on the subject of this WrestleMania’s WWE title match.

This is our first indication of an answer to what has been a very difficult question recently. While over on Monday Night Raw, the champions have clear and obvious challengers lined up, this is absolutely not the case on SmackDown Live. Asuka and Daniel Bryan do not have clear challengers.

Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer has previously stated that he believes Bryan’s challenger will be a returning superstar who is not currently on the SmackDown brand. This leaves a very small amount of choices, with Kevin Owens among the strongest candidates.

Feud-wise there is a strong history between the two, who wrestled against each other in a tag match last year. While Owens mostly competed with Shane McMahon, Daniel Bryan’s return changed the game at the beginning of last year. With Bryan’s current “Planet’s Champion” heel run, Kevin Owens’ family man who likes to eat popcorn and go bowling might just slot in perfectly.

Return Of Bruce Prichard

Yesterday, in the early afternoon, PWInsider reported that Bruce Prichard would be making his full time return to the WWE, taking up a position in their creative team that is referred to as “as important as possible”.

This, following the news from Pro Wrestling Sheet that Arn Anderson has been released by the company, coupled with recent additions to the production staff including Jeff Jarrett, show the continued evolution of WWE’s backstage team. This could be Triple H installing his own people or it could be Vince McMahon undoing changes in style that he didn’t find effective.

Whatever the reasons, we’re going to be looking at a very different WWE in the near future.

Tye Dillinger in AEW

WWE announced the formal release of three superstars recently. Hideo Itami, Tye Dillinger and TJ Perkins. These are three talented individuals who are all believed to be likely to move on to other things sooner rather than later. It’s an exciting time for fans of these people.

While we’ve not heard much about what comes next, fans of the individuals are hoping to see these wrestlers go to their favoured promotions. AEW has come up recently when discussing Tye Dillinger. Cody Rhodes, Executive Vice-President of All Elite Wrestling, commented on this in an interview with Ryan Satin.

In this instance, Cody Rhodes is very clear. He does not say that Tye Dillinger will be signing with AEW, instead heavily promoting Dillinger as a talent to other companies.

Time will tell on this one but it is a glowing report to say the least.

Ronda’s Beating

At Elimination Chamber, Ronda Rousey took some heavy hits, including one which caused her to bleed from the head. According to the Wrestling Observer, Rousey made sure that Becky Lynch would not hold back, encouraging her fellow competitor to really take the fight to her.

According to the Observer:

“There was an agreement regarding this angle that Rousey wanted Lynch to hit her as hard as she could, so she did. Rousey ended up cut in the elbow and needed stitches, and was bleeding heavily from the side of the head…”

It certainly looked believable from where I was sitting, having seen Rousey’s face of fury with blood flowing freely.

Roman Reigns Returning To The Ring

On Thursday, Vince McMahon tweeted that Roman Reigns would be returning to Monday Night Raw.

The hashtags used, “#fighter #proud #classy” caused some excitement among fans who are eager to see The Big Dog return to action.

Got any rumours you want looking into, or reacting to? Comment down below or tweet me @Colohue and next time you might be in this article, too!

Happy wrestling!