If you love something; let it go. If it doesn’t come back, it wasn’t love at all.

And if don’t love something, keep it around as long as you can, and leave it thinking you still love it. Keep it thinking it has another shot. Another chance. Another opportunity. If it stays around, it wasn’t ever going to hurt you.

That’s the logic when it comes to Zack Ryder and World Wrestling Entertainment. A subject written at great length in years past, “The Ryder Revolution” was one man creating some silly YouTube videos to get some attention after his ECW main event push cooled off. “Z! True Long Island Story” became a huge hit with wrestling fans and WWE couldn’t understand why this enhancement talent was suddenly getting chants from the WWE universe and people were putting his name on signs. WWE even started taking away the signs, completely in bewilderment of what they had. Zack Ryder rode the crest of the social media takeover and did it first and better than the WWE as a company. While WWE tried to create their own Myspace in the WWE Universe page, Ryder was utilizing YouTube and Twitter. It took WWE forever to get aboard and once they did, little credit was given to the Zack Attack.

Eventually it felt like the WWE at least saw the guy deserved a push. Zack Ryder eventually became WWE United States champion and was pushed into a program with John Cena, Eve Torres and Kane. Unfortunately, that program was clearly a way to tear Ryder’s popularity apart and cause fans to doubt him as nothing but a flash in the pan. Many wrestlers have talked about how the teardown of Zack Ryder depressed them, proof that the “jump for the brass ring” speech is only true for those who WWE are ready to push at some point and never for those they consider to be of little potential. Ryder continued to try for the company, doing everything from pushing their terrible social media experiment in Tout to creating his own song “Hoeski” on iTunes. This kind of blue collar, “pull up the bootstraps” self-promotion should have been praised by a self-made man like Vincent Kennedy McMahon. Instead it was ignored.

Today, Zack Ryder is worse than a footnote. Instead, he’s the WWE’s test experiment of how to get someone over by using the same tactics Ryder used to get himself over. Today, former model Eva Marie uses Instagram to put over her wrestling development with Brian Kendrick, which has already led to people on Reddit to defend her wrestling development and push for her to be a success, instead of asking why she’s being trained by the WWE to wrestle instead of them just signing a great wrestler like Cheerleader Melissa. Everyone on the NXT roster tries to utilize Twitter the way Ryder did to get one million followers. WWE just took everything that made Zack Ryder special, stripped him of his dignity for defying their vision and then used what Ryder taught them for everyone else.

This all came to a head last night on Monday Night Raw when Zack Ryder got to answer John Cena’s US Championship invitation. It’s quite likely that fellow Long Islander Kevin Connolly pushed for Ryder to be involved in the Entourage guest segments. Ryder proved exactly why he should have been a regular mainstay on the WWE roster, providing an exciting match with John Cena and busting out moves we haven’t seen him do before (it’s hard to do a 450 splash in a squash match). Ryder got an ovation for his efforts before everyone was told to move onto something else. Zack Ryder took to Twitter afterwards and set minds ablaze exactly what he was thinking after the match.

That was my WrestleMania…thank you Long Island!!! #Raw — Zack Ryder (@ZackRyder) May 26, 2015

So why hasn’t WWE released him? Pretty simple. Zack Ryder proved he’s intelligent enough and creative enough to stay ahead of the curve. Even if WWE doesn’t want Ryder in the midcard, they don’t want him going to TNA Wrestling, ROH Wrestling, Global Force Wrestling or any other company in fear of what he could do elsewhere. If Ryder could outsmart the WWE to get himself over, could he help a competitor take one percent of the market? That’s all he’d have to potentially take to cause WWE to keep him on his downside agreement for as long as possible. Whether or not you believe a free agent Ryder calling himself “Matt Attack” Matthew Cardona could turn any heads aside from a sarcastic, “Oh look, another former WWE guy getting a push in TNA” reaction, doesn’t change the fact that if it was true that Ryder had no value, Ryder wouldn’t be in the WWE.

The better question is, why does Zack Ryder stay? Fact is, the guy loves being a WWE superstar. I base this only on opinion but it feels like Ryder is committed to being a WWE superstar more than he’s committed to being a successful pro wrestler. Ryder doesn’t look to want to risk losing that downside guarantee and having to start all over somewhere else. Even when WWE has done absolutely everything to destroy his reputation, his popularity and his integrity, Ryder stays loyal. As we know throughout WWE history, it isn’t the loyal soldiers who get rewarded. It’s the soldiers who turn their guns on Vince. Ryder isn’t ready to bite the hand that feeds him. For a WWE fan, that’s loyalty you can love. For a fan of Matt Cardona as a Ghostbusters superfan who changed the wrestling business in the 21st century, it’s disappointing. Then again, it’s not up to me to decide what makes him happy.

Photo from WWE.com