Shell Shocked: A look back at Ryback's rise and sympathetic fall

Back in the early months of 2012, SmackDown boasted a young exciting talent who used to squash wrestler without breaking a sweat. Sweetly called as Ryback, the guy even tore down his opponents in handicap matches.

A push gone wrong

But this was not the first exposure that he got at WWE. Ryan Reeves first made his appearance in the main stream as a part of the rebellious Nexus. Back then he was known by the name of Skip Sheffield who uses to clothesline the hell out of big names like John Cena and Mark Henry. His Nexus reign was cut short due to an unlucky injury which sidelined him for more time than expected. This was one of the major turning points in his career as it did him a plethora of good things and some bad things to balance.

Reeves was then repackaged as Ryback as said earlier and was left at SmackDown to destroy anything that came into his path. His domination coupled with his size reminded the fans of a certain Goldberg who used to tear down the WCW roster back in the late nineties.

The Comparison

Soon Ryback suffered the same problem that Goldberg faced back then: he ran out of midcarders and jobbers. When Eric Bischoff had a clear idea of what to do with Goldberg, Ryback didn’t have the luxury of such an evil mind as the creative head.

Instead of slowly building him up the card, the sickening PG-era creative decided to put him directly into the main event against CM Punk and that too as a replacement for John Cena. The push was actually similar to giving Stevie Richards the WWE Championship on his debut at WrestleMania main event. Clearly Ryback wasn’t ready for such a big feud.

And the result? Ryback lost his undefeated streak and some more matches to CM Punk and none of the matches developed enough heat to make his career flourish.

After the CM Punk feud, Ryback dropped further down the ranks when the creative decided to make him feud with Shield and Mark Henry. There were no gains for him in either of the department and Ryback was no longer the undefeated monster who was almost impossible to knock down. The lack of credibility however didn’t hold back him being over with the fans until a turn that put another nail into his coffin.

His heel turn was followed with a feud with the biggest name in the company, John Cena. And like always the young talent that went up against Cena soon fell to the pit. By this time everything he built up during his babyface run had been lost and he went on a short feud with Chris Jericho after failing to capture the gold from Cena at various occasion.

A Major nail

Then the one of the biggest points of Ryback’s career came, he became a “Paul Heyman Guy”. the amount of heat he generate alongside Heyman was immense and the ECW founder deserves credit for what he does with such talent. But soon, this step also came to an end as Ryback’s feud with Punk ended in his burial. The feud was mainly between Heyman and Punk rather than Ryback and Punk which meant that Ryback was overshadowed by a non-wrestler.

The conclusion of that feud left him wandering around with no direction so the creative decided to make him pair with Curtis Axel who was also in a similar situation. From that tag team to a potential bout for the Intercontinental championship, Ryback is now making headlines for the amount of time he spends on writing and deleting his tweets.

He seems to be a man lost in the business who doesn’t know what to do. The pushes given to him hadn’t been helping either. He even revealed that he might leave the wrestling business because of his failure to make an impact with all the strength and power he has.

With a much better push and some gimmicky changes, Ryback could be one of the break out stars of the future. But for now, from the looks of it he is going to be one among the million wrestlers who were scapegoats of the WWE’s sickening decisions.

Feed me Something good

What if he wasn’t injured during his Nexus days? Or What if he wasn’t pushed directly into the main event or What if he didn’t turn heel?… all these are questions that have had major impact in the career of Ryback. And as they say its not the things that we do that makes us regret it’s the things that we didn’t do, and as far as Ryback is concerned it might be time to take a break unless the creative actually decide to take their claws off him.