Ryback/Punk Nonsense

[Brian Fowler]

Ignoring the fact that I jumped out of my seat and marked out when it happened, the Ryback loss to Mark Henry at Mania was just fucking absurd.  He got pinned, clean, at Wrestlemania, the day before starting a program with the WWE champion.

[Gonzalez]

Ignoring the fact that I jumped out of my seat and marked out when it happened, the Ryback loss to Mark Henry at Mania was just fucking absurd.  He got pinned, clean, at Wrestlemania, the day before starting a program with the WWE champion.

Like I said before... They really wanted him to fail, and look like a failure in the eyes of fans. And that Cena feud really did the trick.

[kafkonia]

 

The possible Warrior spot you guys are saying Ryback should have is reserved for Roman Reigns and Big E Langston, thank you.

"Ryback can't work 15 minute main events" but Luther Reigns can.

Is this a gimmick post, or do you really think Horshu is in the Shield?

[Brian Fowler]

As a side note, there was a kid, maybe 10 or 11 years old, just in front of me at WrestleMania, and god the dirty look he gave me for cheering when Henry won was hilarious.

[kafkonia]

 

The dude got killed with "Goldberg" chants when he was dropping jobbers on their spines.

 

It was the same three people every week. They were pitiful. 

"Goldberg, Goldberg. why is nobody else chanting. He is bald GOLDBERG!!! GOLDBERG!!!"

 

Dang, I thought Deadheads were committed, but these three guys followed Raw around from week to week just to chant Goldberg? Shee-oot.

[mattdangerously]

Not dissing the guy, be it should've been obvious that Ryback was a guy that one be a one main-event-push kind of guy. I just don't see how anyone could've expected a guy who built his whole gimmick/moveset on "top star food" to have momentum to last once he feuded with a top guy.

Imagine Goldberg jobbed to Hogan and fucked off? Or Batista lost to Triple H and fucked off?

Ryback wasn't remotely as over as either guy.

He wasn't booked remotely as well as either guy, but he was over and he could have been a big star.

If they had protected him and given him better booking, Ryback absolutely could have been a big star. So what if he has a bad attitude, is super reckless, and has to be led through his matches. I just described Goldberg, too. And he had the extra handicap of working in WCW. It can be done.

[Fat Spanish Waiter]

 

 

The possible Warrior spot you guys are saying Ryback should have is reserved for Roman Reigns and Big E Langston, thank you.

"Ryback can't work 15 minute main events" but Luther Reigns can.

Is this a gimmick post, or do you really think Horshu is in the Shield?

 

Fuck, Horshu was way cooler than Roman Reigns. I was a huge Luther Reigns mark. Wishful thinking, I guess.

[Skeeball Wizard]

I think the biggest problem with the way Ryback was handled was that, for seemingly no reason, they hotshotted him into the main event

No reason? NO REASON!? One of their biggest stars was going to be out of action for awhile, and they needed to install someone else into that program. I think that's a good enough reason to put Ryback in that position during that time period.

Personally, I believe someone had it in for Ryback. So instead of having Cena lose the feud to Punk before the Rumble, they decided to instead feed Ryback to Punk killing his momentum on purpose.

Fair point, I was more referring to the idea that he should have had a more gradual push to the main event spot. Had that happened, he would probably be in a much better spot. That being said, his current tag team situation seems like the best possible use of both of them.(besides Curtis and Mick Foley being a tag team.)

[Gonzalez]

We need a separate thread for all future "Rybeliever" fantasy booking. Like that Triple H project that everyone forgot about.

[ChesterCopperpot]

Well actually that arena is designed in a certain way that it makes the hard camera shake. I believe it also shook throughout the Punk/Vince match as well.

 

The Team WWE vs Team Nexus faceoff that had the camera shaking on the last Raw before Summerslam 2010 was also in that arena

 

[Cristobal]

Not dissing the guy, be it should've been obvious that Ryback was a guy that one be a one main-event-push kind of guy. I just don't see how anyone could've expected a guy who built his whole gimmick/moveset on "top star food" to have momentum to last once he feuded with a top guy.

Imagine Goldberg jobbed to Hogan and fucked off? Or Batista lost to Triple H and fucked off?

Ryback wasn't remotely as over as either guy.

He wasn't booked remotely as well as either guy, but he was over and he could have been a big star.

If they had protected him and given him better booking, Ryback absolutely could have been a big star. So what if he has a bad attitude, is super reckless, and has to be led through his matches. I just described Goldberg, too. And he had the extra handicap of working in WCW. It can be done.

Right, and it WAS done. Hence the Goldberg chants. You can slip the same old shit by a wrestling crowd, but you've got to dress it up a LITTLE. In more than a singlet.

[JonnyLaw]

Losing to Punk wasn't as big a problem as failing to ever get one over on the Shield. He could have recovered from losing to the longest reigning champ in 25 years, but constantly getting punked by a trio of rookies was the nail in the coffin.

[Victator]

I think winning the rumble would have fixed all the damage done. 

[piranesi]

The Mania loss to Henry was the absolute best.  There was no reason for it at all.  Everyone was certain that they couldn't job him out clean again.

 

And Henry just fell on him.  It was like a big rib at that point...his whole career, I mean.  And we were all let in on the joke then.

[Victator]

I think it is pretty obvious at this point WWE do not want more main eventers. They want a roster of mid carders financially dependent on WWE to make a living.

I think the last thing WWE expected after buying WCW was guys just quitting and it got up in their crawl. 

[Fat Spanish Waiter]

I think it is pretty obvious at this point WWE do not want more main eventers. They want a roster of mid carders financially dependent on WWE to make a living.

I think the last thing WWE expected after buying WCW was guys just quitting and it got up in their crawl. 

Seems like a pretty good theory. They've cut the knees out of everyone since Batista.

[caley]

I think it is pretty obvious at this point WWE do not want more main eventers. They want a roster of mid carders financially dependent on WWE to make a living.

I think the last thing WWE expected after buying WCW was guys just quitting and it got up in their crawl. 

This is actually a pretty good point that I'd never considered.  But a lot of guys that WWE was giving big pushes to did just up and quit: Batista, Bobby Lashley, Chris Jericho, Kurt Angle (quit/was fired, whatever), Rock, RVD.  So, it could very well be that WWE is content to keep WWE as 'Starring John Cena' and supporting cast.

[Victator]

And not to go too far with this. But Punk's biggest push came when it looked like he was going to quit. Heck they gave Swagger a WM push when it sounded like he was going to quit. 

[piranesi]

 

 So, it could very well be that WWE is content to keep WWE as 'Starring John Cena' and supporting cast.

 

 

So they've settled on a stable of people who a guaranteed to stay loyal, and in return are guaranteed to keep their static position in a never-changing cast of go-nowheres? People on the roster now are just like trapped in a lava lamp?  Slowly drifting, sometimes up, sometimes down...but always in a circle...cycling around but never going anywhere and never leaving?

 

It explains why guys getting jobbed out mercilessly are fine to stick around.  They know that no one is going anywhere or getting fired no matter how bad they are made to look...they'll slowly cycle back around to an IC title reign in a few months. 

 

Like, who was the last person who actually suffered the consequences of being jobbed out?  who was actually jobbed right off of t.v. and totally lost their spot on the visible roster?  Ryder...who they didn't want around anyway?

[RIPPA]

Big E is too small to achieve anything beyond where he is. He's like a jacked up Taz without the talent.

And here I thought we were friends

[Jrag]

The whole Ryback v Punk series did nothing for anyone. 

 

You think Ryback would have been getting those huge pops against anyone?  It was the top heel, at the tail end of a super long title reign, bumping around the ring like a mad man. The only reason Ryback had a shot as a top guy was because of Punk.  No one else has even come close to making Ryback look that good.

 

They screwed up at Mania, but Ryback wasn't dead in the water until week 2 of the Cena feud when he backed down from a one on one fight.  They turned a monster face into a chickenshit heel at that moment and there was no going back.  A month later he was walking out of matches with The Miz.

[MonteCarl]

Losing to Punk wasn't as big a problem as failing to ever get one over on the Shield. He could have recovered from losing to the longest reigning champ in 25 years, but constantly getting punked by a trio of rookies was the nail in the coffin.

 

THIS. He never, ever got his revenge against The Shield. It should've built to a Mania match where Ryback faced all three of The Shield in a Gauntlet match. Ryback makes his way through the first two before succumbing to the third via shennagins. Puts Ryback over and protects the Shield. But the fact that he just kind of gave up even trying and simply moved on...yeah, that was dumb.

[Greggulator]

Okay, so they built Ryback up and he jobbed out to The Shield and never got revenge. At the same time, do The Shield become what they became without taking out Ryback? I would say no. And who is more valuable to the WWE? The Shield or Ryback? The Shield, in a walk. They've torn the house down for a year.

[MonteCarl]

The whole thing with The Shield and Ryback was just never resolved on either end. Ryback wasn't really "taken out" as in he never came back, so them beating down Ryback didn't really do much ultimately for The Shield. Everybody just sort of moved on and forgot about the three months of them interfering in Ryback's matches. The Shield's match at Mania was quickly booked and thrown together and didn't mean much. Same with Ryback's. Put them in a match together and it means more, and in the scenario where Ryback goes through two of The Shield members, let's say Rollins and Ambrose, before falling to Reigns gets all of them over. The Shield was never defeated at that point. That would've been the first time they took any sort of loss, so it builds up Ryback for getting those wins, but The Shield ultimately winning the full match keeps them over as well. Seemed like obvious booking to me, but then two weeks out they change it up and they all end up in meaningless matches.

[Jrag]

Never resolved, but he still looked awesome fighting those three guys.  He was still a believable monster when he took Cena's head off on the post-WM Raw.  It's that next week that killed him.

 

I honestly think the Shield have made more guys in the last year than anyone else.  Win, lose or draw, everyone who has feuded with them is more over afterwards. Bryan, Goldust, Cody, The Uso's, Ryback...  Even Big Show was getting his best pops of the last few years against those guys.  I agree they should have paid off the Ryback stuff with the Shield's first lost, but I can't complain because Bryan ultimately took that spot.