Ryback On Daniel Bryan's In Ring Return, Supposed Heat With Rusev, Comparisons To Goldberg
Last week The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling welcomed former WWE Intercontinental Champion, Ryback. Ryback joined Chad and John to talk all about his Feed Me More Brand as well all the amazing things going on in "The Big Guy's" world that does not seem to ever stop as this former Nexus member has cultivated a world outside WWE that may allow him to never ever look back. In the following excerpt, Ryback talks about his friend Daniel Bryan's in ring return, supposed heat with another good friend Rusev and fans comparisons to Goldberg and Ultimate Warrior. The full episode can be downloaded at this link.
On Daniel Bryan's in ring return:
"I am very happy for him. I saw him back at Rusev's wedding last year and we were talking and it was when he had returned (I believe) he was on TV as an on air role at that time but I could see that it wasn't fulfilling to him because he didn't have that outlet to perform and he didn't have that physical aspect of it. You've got to understand that when you wrestle and he wrestled for a majority of his life and I could tell you first hand that especially for myself having to back off a bit this last year that it is extremely and mentally difficult when you are used to making money with your body and being told you can't do something is extremely taxing on the human mind. For him to have to still be in that environment, granted not as much as he was but to still show up to TV every week and to watch all these guys he came up with getting their opportunity to perform and not being able to do that is extremely frustrating. I felt for him deeply because I knew how bad he wanted to wrestle."
"It is really cool to see him get another chance because he was so hot when it all got taken away and I was there for that and I witnessed that on different occasions where he went through the different injuries up there and overcame them. So to see him return, I'd like to see him take it easy for a little bit and he seems to have thrown himself back into the mix full steam by taking an apron power bomb and doing those God damn dropkicks where he lands on his head but I would have liked to have seen him ease back in but I guess if you are going to go and he only knows one speed and that is why everybody loves him."
Supposed "bad blood" With Rusev:
"I guess there are a lot of people out there that are so smart and they know everything about wrestling and I can't tell you how many times I talk about Rusev as one of my favorite all time opponents and one of my favorite people. What friends do is they go online sometimes and they bust each other's balls. He's done it to me and I've done it to him and it is unfortunate that we live in a day and age where people can just cherry-pick something."
"I see he is doing an Instagram live and I click on it. He sees me, cracks a smile and says 'big guy'. I leave a comment and he makes a comment about me which we talk about through text. He made a comment about me not being natural and I made a comment back to him that he could lose more weight and I got pegged the bad guy in that one because two friends were having fun and it was one of those things where he says me and Ryback have no beef, well nobody takes that part. Everybody just thinks that Ryback was blocked from Rusev's Instagram and I can assure that I am not blocked and we were just talking earlier today. People have to understand that guys laugh at this sh*t. If I had a beef with someone the last thing I would do is go on an Instagram live and hash it out on that."
Constant comparisons to Ultimate Warrior and Goldberg:
"People are always going to do that and the only thing you can do is go out and live your life and have your career. It is unfortunately that you are going to have people that they're extremely loyal to the people that came before you and I've always said that and I never once tried to go out there and replicate being any of those guys. I have a bald head and I have big traps. They did short matches and I do longer matches but that is the role that they played and I had played that role as well doing the shorter matches but that is just what people like to compare you to in the guys that came before you. In ten or fifth teen years if another guy comes along wearing an air-brushed singlet he might get compared to me. It is just the way that the business is and you can't really get too caught up in that because we are all our own individual person or wrestler at the end of the day and I think the fans that know our styles were completely different, the move sets are completely different and the characters are completely different."
The concept behind the look of Ryback:
"It was Vince's idea for the singlet. I was back doing live events (after) the ankle injury which was horrific and I've talked about that on my podcast to try and get people to understand that I still deal with it to this day. I actually just had the last piece of metal from a plate and five screws that they got out. They had to leave one screw in my foot and couldn't get it out from this doctor that originally botched the surgery that caused the nerve damage. It was not the easiest thing to overcome and I am grateful that I was able to do it but when I came back and was doing live events as Skip Shefflied still, eventually I switched to Ryback and I've talked about this story but Vince thought I was fat when I came back. How he thought I was fat to this day I can't and still don't know but I was in trunks and a part of this is that it is all just a f*cking game and that is the way it is and they wanted me in a black singlet but it looked horrible. I looked like a smaller version of Big Show with just having the bald head and it didn't fit and it was just a plain black singlet. They had the seamstresses make it and I put it on and went into Vince's office with Vince and Triple H and he couldn't have been more thrilled over the black singlet and I just thought it was the absolute sh*ts."
"I remember I got a hold of RVD and got his old airbrush guy initially and through him was able to kind of get the "are you all right if I go this route" and just doing the right thing because he wasn't there at the time and I didn't know if he was ever going to be back and he had no problem with it. It kind of went from there and to me I love the singlet now and wouldn't trade them in for anything."
For this and every other episode of The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling and The Triple Threat Podcast featuring "The Franchise" Shane Douglas please subscribe to us on iTunes, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Podomatic, and Player FM. Also follow us on Twitter @TwoManPowerTrip