Yes! Daniel Bryan makes his return to WWE Smackdown this coming Thursday night after taking nearly a year off due to a compounded series of injuries. While his opponent in his return match is unknown, it's absolutely certain that he will be met with a hot crowd of WWE fanatics finally able to blow the dust off of their foam fingers and maroon-colored tee-shirts, ready to point their fingers skyward upon hearing the first guitar riff of "Flight of the Valkyries." However, this isn't the first time that a major superstar has ever made a return in pro wrestling history, and it's also not certainly the last. The "return match" is actually one of the most tried and true tropes of pro wrestling, superstars getting injured and/or leaving (and returning to) territories since the beginning of time it seems. A quick way to pop a crowd and re-energize fan interest in a product, it's certainly happened more than ten times, but these are ten of the best. From matches with significant builds to matches just thrown right into the ring without ample warning, these superstar return bouts absolutely led in each case to being tremendous benefits for the companies in which they occurred.
Besides having been an independent professional wrestling manager for a decade, Marcus Dowling is a Washington, DC-based writer who has contributed to a plethora of online and print magazines and newspapers writing about music and popular culture over the past 15 years.
