What’s the story?
Ryback is a man of many stories and anecdotes. He does not hold back when it comes to his podcast entitled ‘Conversations with the Big Guy’. Recently he addressed a long-standing rumour on the show, about him being pencilled in to face a WWE legend at Wrestlemania XXX.
In case you didn’t know...
Ryback was an integral part of WWE from 2010 to 2016, having been part of many WWE Championship matches and was even a former Intercontinental Champion.
At the time of Wrestlemania XXX, he competed with his partner Curtis Axel as RybAxel on the pre-show for the Tag Team Championships but were defeated by The Usos in a Fatal Four Way match on the grand stage. However, Ryback informs us that WWE possibly had bigger plans for him at the show.
The heart of the matter
According to The Big Guy, he was slated to face ‘The Ultimate Warrior’ at Wrestlemania XXX, although he had no idea how serious the deal was. This is how he explained the situation, in his own words:
“Mark Carrano (senior director of talent relations) actually had shown me the WrestleMania card early. They kind of have an idea of what they want to do, obviously, ahead of time, and they had on it Ryback versus Ultimate Warrior. And I just said, ‘cool’.”
Ryback remembers having mixed emotions at the time, because while he was excited about wrestling The Ultimate Warrior, whom he idolised as a kid, he had no idea what kind of shape the man was in and if he would even be fit to compete. Ryback says that he would have done it because he did everything they asked of him.
What's next?
It is unlikely that we will see Ryback in WWE anytime soon but we're certain he will be full of such anecdotes on his podcast. Your best bet to see him wrestle would probably be to catch him working on the independent circuit.
Author's note
Considering The Ultimate Warrior was certainly in no shape to wrestle at the time, and passed away in a matter of days following Wrestlemania, it is probably a good thing that this match never saw the light of day. Some dream matches are meant to just be dreams.