Ryback Comments on How He Left WWE, Why He’s Excited About AEW and More

Ryback has a pretty good run in WWE this decade. In fact, it could be argued that if you could pick one guy that never became a World Champion in WWE this decade that probably should have been, his name might be at the top of the list. He was really popular in 2012 especially, but he just wasn’t able to get over the hump in terms of being the World Champion. Ryback also legally changed his name from Ryan Reeves to Ryback Reeves, so that shows how committed he still is to the Ryback brand.

Ryback recently sat down with WSVN-TV Miami, FL Entertainment Reporter Chris Van Vliet to talk about Ryback’s WWE career, why he didn’t feel like talking to Vince McMahon when he left the company in August 2016 and plenty more. Thanks to Chris for sending along these notes.

How he left WWE:

“I told them f**k you, take me off TV and I left. I walked out of St. Louis and I went home. They tried to stop my pay and they weren’t going to pay me while I rode out my contract so I went on injury pay and got my ear and nose fixed and they paid me all the way up until my contract expired on August 8th I believe. If you remember, I released them and wished them the best in their future endeavors in an online video because they were trying to fire me. They wanted me to get cleared and I didn’t get cleared until the day my contract ran up so that they could not publicly say they fired me because that is what they will usually try to do to a talent to make them look bad in the situation. But you guys didn’t get me.”

When he left WWE he said he never wants to f**king talk to Vince again:

“I left and I didn’t talk to anyone. I think me and Dolph Ziggler went and got wings at Hooters. I go to St. Louis and I saw the booking for the day and I hadn’t started the new contract they have given me so the games had already started. I just knew I was done. I sat there for a bit and I thought it through fully and I was already pretty close to leaving, I was just waiting. And I said this is it. I went and said what I had to say and they said ‘Do you want to go talk to Vince’ and I said ‘I never want to f**king talk to him again’ and I left.”

His thoughts on AEW:

“I’m excited, we got AEW here and I’m very happy for Cody and everybody involved in that. They have a huge advantage in wrestling right now because they’re starting fresh and they can do it right and they can do wrestling better than WWE. Now are they going to come in and take over right away? Not right away. But if they put out a great product and they take care of the wrestlers, every pro wrestler will want to go wrestle there.”

His match against Mark Henry at WrestleMania 29:

“That was probably the toughest out of all of it. That one really, really made no sense at all because I was going from that and we knew I was going on to John Cena after that. This is why I tell people that if you just look at the history you can clearly see there’s something going on with momentum and stuff.”

On being booked to lose:

“You can only do what they tell you to go out and do. People that say ‘Oh you lost the big one’ no, I won. I played the role. You don’t say to an actor because he got killed in a scene that he lost or that he was a loser. Pro wrestling is the exact same thing as far as that goes it’s just portrayed a little differently.”

Thanks to Chris for sending that along. I watched the whole 30+ minute interview and it was interesting. Ryback mentioned two guys in WWE that didn’t seem to like him – John Cena and CM Punk, but other than that, he spoke well about the roster. He just hated how he was booked at certain points.