Why the Punk - Ryback feud is a mistake

When the Punk – Axel/Heyman match was booked at the Night of Champions, the one thing I was surely counting on was the interference of a 3rd guy from the Paul Heyman stable. The reason being that leading up to the event, Axel was booked like a total joke and kept losing matches to add to the lack of faith in him by his manager, who dreaded the thought of being at the mercy of his prodigal son in the opponents’ corner.

While I was secretly hoping for it to be Wade Barrett or Mark Henry, it was not a surprise when Ryback showed up and assisted Heyman by putting Punk through a table and helping the ‘Walrus’ get a pin on CM Punk. Going into the pay-per-view, Ryback was not featured heavily and sporadically wrestled on TV, which were signs of an upcoming reveal on the development of his character.

But a Paul Heyman guy? Really?

Ryback does have it in him to make a good heel I suppose, but with Paul Heyman guys, you would expect a lot more than just suspect potential. Lesnar, Punk, RVD, all those guys did not necessarily need Heyman to get to where they are at. But being associated with Heyman just took them several notches higher.

With Ryback, the character is so stale already that even with Paul Heyman doing the work on the mic, the chants of ‘Goldberg’ directed towards Ryback continues. While he is not to be entirely faulted, his work in the ring too has not really evolved much since his debut and his personality is quite wooden. As a heel, he has managed to show some colour but still has to get quite a bit of work done before he can be called interesting.

What does all of this mean for the ‘Best in the world’? We have seen him do battle with Ryback last year during his historic championship reign of 434 days and the matches were anything but memorable. Punk is capable of getting good matches out of most workers, but so are Bryan and Jericho.

While Bryan would manage to get good matches out of Ryback, even Jericho struggled with timing during his matches with the human wrecking ball as he would continue with his sloppy ways. But hopefully, Punk being the outspoken guy that he is, is able to ensure that Ryback’s greenness doesn’t affect the match-quality too much.

But, I can’t help but think that for the best all-round wrestler in the company, this feud is a mistake, and the longer he solely focuses on Paul Heyman as his adversary, the WWE is missing out on the money that Punk can make for them. The responses he has been able to generate since his comeback at Payback show that Punk is red hot commodity right now and should be in meaningful feuds rather than working with people in a bid to just further his blood-feud with Heyman.

Even in the feud with Heyman, Curtis Axel seemingly has not been able to live upto his end of the bargain which necessitated the need for Ryback to come in as a viable replacement for Brock’s power. But evidently, he lacks the pull and the athletic prowess of Lesnar who can produce great matches in the ring despite being away from the business for so long.

Ryback being in such a prominent place on the WWE card doesn’t really do a lot for me as the feud has been done before. A chance is being spent on him which could have easily gone to the likes of Kassius Ohno or even Cesaro, who could have had terrific matches with CM Punk. I hope I am wrong about the assessment of the feud but if not, then we may have a first that nobody would be proud of: a failed Paul Heyman guy experiment!