Ryback On AEW Honeymoon Period Being Over, WWE Locking Up Talent

We're now two months into AEW Dynamite and the novelty of a brand new wrestling brand has started to wear off. Many who thought that the rise of AEW would be similar to WCW in the mid-90s when it was part of the Monday Night Wars are now not seeing those same similarities.

Ryback was asked about the current state of AEW when Wrestling Inc's Raj Giri joined his podcast.

"The excitement period is over for the new company, essentially. That was going to happen and there was nothing they can do. I think though, as time goes on, and I think as more names become freed up in pro wrestling and other opportunities arise; say, Rusev's contract is up and the following week he shows up on AEW or whenever he can, that would be a big deal and that would spark some interest because Rusev has a fanbase. That would kick them up a little notch and you would have more angles that you can do with Rusev, or whoever it is, a Luke Harper shows up. That's another guy now where you just start slowly building that roster up who has name value," stated Ryback.

While AEW would like to land some big names from WWE that want new starts, WWE has proactively stifled this from happening. Over this past year they've extended the contracts of many of their current Superstars to prevent them from heading to AEW or anywhere else in the near future.

Ryback acknowledged that and stated that will make things even harder for AEW until those guys are free.

"It's going to be a blend of doing that for them and when people become available, but the problem is that WWE is really f***ing smart. They locked down so many of those guys it's like, AEW what are you going to do? Because they know how it is to get guys over, you can't get independent guys over as a group. It is a tough sell so I think as time goes on, I think that AEW is going to continue to try. They have to stay afloat and I think eventually guys will start getting freed up and by then it's going to create some opportunities for them to be pushing the numbers," said Ryback.

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Conversations with the Big Guy Ryback with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.

Peter Bahi contributed to this article.