What’s the story?
Former WWE Intercontinental Champion Ryback has taken to Twitter to defend himself once more. Ryback recently made some derogatory comments about India on his Conversations With The Big Guy podcast, comments that The Big Guy believes were misquoted and spun to make him look bad.
In case you didn’t know...
Ryback’s professional wrestling career began way back in 2004 when a younger Ryan Reeves was a competitor on the $1 million Tough Enough. Reeves was unsuccessful on the reality show but was eventually signed to WWE, where he performed as Skip Sheffield in NXT before becoming Ryback in 2012. Ryback was pushed heavily initially, going on a long undefeated streak and being thrust into the world championship picture.
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Things hit a wall for Ryback following a one-sided feud with John Cena, and despite a small upswing in 2015 his career soon petered out. Ryback and WWE parted ways in August 2016, and The Big Guy has been wildly outspoken on a number of topics to do with WWE ever since. WWE’s recent forays into India did not escape criticism from The Big Guy.
The heart of the matter
Ryback had some strong things to say about India recently on his Conversations With The Big Guy podcast. The Big Guy expressed a sceptical view of WWE’s Indian expansion, referencing the relative poverty of India’s 1.3billion people.
“...the people don’t have any f*cking money out there, so I don’t know why they’re trying. I heard that the merchandise sales out there aren’t too good. No sh*t! Like, I’ve been to India. They don’t have money. There’s certain people that do, but the ones that do, I’m pretty sure they aren’t watching fake f*cking fighting!”
Ryback has since defended himself on Twitter, saying that he was misquoted on the subject, before reinforcing his positive opinion of India and its culture.
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What’s next?
Ryback has not pulled any punches when it comes to criticising WWE in the near-year since his departure, and while this often provides interesting insight and no small amount of humour, disrespectful comments about the home of 1.3 billion people are obviously going to rub many the wrong way. Ryback’s defence 's hard to accept as his initial quote was rather difficult to take out of context.
Author’s take
Professional wrestlers are masters of making mountains out of molehills, so it is wise to take any of their comments with a pinch of salt. It is difficult to see how Ryback’s original words were misquoted, and while there may have been no malice behind the words that doesn’t change the words themselves.
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