I'd really love to see how it's possible to kill the bridge dragon without cheesing it.
1. That's an optional fight. I never even triggered the drake arriving on the save of the game I beat.
2. Any moderately powerful (+6 - +10) weapon should take it out fairly quickly. It's 5 hits with the bare minimum stats to weild a Black Knight Halberd 2-handed (so 23 str 18 dex I think, I forget if it was upgraded yet in the video, but it may have been +2), so you are only looking at about 7 - 10 hits with any +10 weapon (or +5 divine weapon), both of which are available 1 boss past Taurus Demon.
3. Unless going sunbro, you gain about nothing from actually unlocking that bonfire. The Burg fire is just barely further away, needing you to kill just 5 simple enemies to get exactly where you would have been.
I would also like to politely disagree with your post as a whole. Although it may feel like cheesing and trying again at first in Dark Souls, you are also likely taking a lot of information in while fighting about the enemy's AI (if they turtle, how to provoke them, etc.), their various attacks and timings, and other useful things even if you don't realize it. But, after a few times you should notice that you are dodging/parrying enemies much more easily, provoking turtle spearmen, and doing all that fun stuff much more successfully. DS is not about cheesing, it's about taking your time and learning your enemies in order to overcome them. That time may involve dying if you are unlucky, but it's usually as simple as keeping the fight down to one person at a time and learning how to fight that person. Once you learn it for yourself (watching videos on Youtube can help, but you won't truly know parry timings until you DO parry a few times), the game becomes much simpler.