Looking at the title of this blog I’m sure most will just assume that I hate Ryback going in, but that’s not quite right.
As a performer it’s true I don’t think much of him, and as a person obviously I don’t know him at all.
So I do want it understood going forward this isn’t personal, just my opinion of what I think is for the best.
Let me just lay out a little what some of the negatives and positives are I see in Ryback.
His offense is nothing special. For all his intimidating physical presence when he throws a basic move it doesn’t present itself to me as anything inspiring. As well he has a very limited move set. He comes off as powerful but not at all athletic. He shows no more than the most basic understanding of wrestling psychology. His selling for the offense of the people he’s working with looks awkward and phony. He doesn’t appear capable of going more than 5 minutes without getting blown up. From what little we’ve seen of his talking ability he appears to be among the very worst in the main roster. He doesn’t seem to be improving at any noticeable rate.
He has a definite charisma beyond just the obvious from his appearance. He displays a certain ferocious intensity lacking from many powerhouses such as Mason Ryan that we haven’t seen for many years. He’s shown dedication with several years in developmental when many like him quit when not getting fast tracked to the main roster. His impressive physique can not be achieved in any way without a dedicated work ethic. His desire to return after a devastating ankle injury that required 3 surgeries and could have even ended his career is commendable.
So part of me does actually want him to succeed, especially given that he didn’t have the quickest or easiest path to the big time and what he’s over come. I also think he’s been booked better than almost everyone they’ve had in years, and I want Ryback to succeed not just for him then but as a reward for those people who’ve done the right thing with him.
So why is my desire to see him fail so much stronger? Well part of it is because I can list many other performers in the WWE with a similar list of positives without all the negatives. Simply put, I’d rather see people who are much better than him reach the top both as a reward for them and partially selfishly because I don’t want to see someone who really kind of sucks in main events when I could instead see, you know, good stuff.
But the main reason I hope Ryback fails is not listed in the negatives I put up in the earlier paragraph.
Below is a picture of Ryan Reeves AKA Ryback in 2004 when he competed in WWE Tough Enough.
Impressive physique no? Check him out in WWE developmental Ohio Valley Wrestling somewhere around 2006 when he was known as Silverback
Also Impressive? I just think it’s scary.
Then in July of 2006 he was suspended for failing a WWE wellness test as documented in the CNN documentary Death Grip: Inside Pro Wrestling. He apparently was taking over the counter supplements which caused the violation. Despite these supplements being taken off the market his suspension remained. When he returned, now “clean” without the benefit of these supplements, he looked like this.
I love the irony that he in and his tag team partner in that picture Jon Bolen were known as High Dosage. Now Ryback as Skip Sheffield in Nexus
And of course as he looks now
Look, I’m not nieve enough to think that the majority of the performers on the current WWE roster are clean, but it is without question that it is better than it used to be. Whether that means that more people are off the juice, or simply taking less steroids, it’s an improvement.
And in this time when WWE can legitimately look at the man who’s been their champion the last year in CM Punk and crow about how he’s proof that your best bet to make it to the top is to be clean like Punk and mix that in with hard work and talent, instead Vince is doing the equivalent of his old quote from years ago that if he walked by a guy in the back and saw a needle sticking out of his ass he might say something to him about it. McMahon doesn’t look at Ryback and think he’s clean, nobody does. He looks at him and says if he’s passing his piss test, which everyone does (except Randy Orton amazingly) then we have deniable probability, which is good enough.
But it isn’t good enough. The amount of early deaths in the last 2 years, at the same time as steroid failures in WWE have pretty much gone away (read: the guys have figured out how to beat it), has been better. And I don’t want to see those guys who are doing more to live a healthy lifestyle thinking they have take something to make it to the top and earn as much for themselves and their families as possible, or for everyone to think the only way is to go back to what once was acceptable when no testing was done.
I liked seeing the Mason Ryan and Ezekiel Jackson’s of the world fail to get over, and I fear seeing a guy like Ryback getting continuous chances mainly because of his physical appearance. I don’t want to see this industry have another string of dead bodies in a long line of them already. And I’m not saying just this one man like Ryback will cause that, but I am saying that this is an industry who’s main player Vince McMahon still is stuck in that way of thinking, and it’s a slippery slope for the industry, the performers, and even the fans, who must take their fair share of responsibility in all this, to fall back to that attitude too easily.
So this is why I want Ryback to fail. 20 % selfishly because I’d rather watch better performers, 80 % because I want as clean and healthy an industry as possible. So how about next time you go to see Ryback you don’t chant “Feed Me More”, or even “Goldberg”, how about a large thunderous “Steroids” chant they can’t ignore?
