Did you think that all of Ryback‘s complaints about his former employer would be contained to just 2016? Well, I hate to break it to you, but just like Alberto Del Rio, this is a pit with no bottom. The Big Guy is still angry about WWE and he’s still telling just about every tale that pops into his head.
If you’re wondering why wrestlers like Ryback and CM Punk can be so bitter about WWE after being on television for years and (according to even the performers themselves) making fantastic money doing so, maybe Ryback’s latest story can shed some light on that for you. According to a recent episode of Conversation With The Big Guy, Ryback had a perfectly legitimate claim to a lawsuit against a doctor that performed a botched ankle surgery on him in 2011, but WWE threatened to end his push and his standing in the company if he went through with it. Though he now regrets doing so, he acquiesced. And in his retelling, the instant the statute of limitations passed on his claim to that lawsuit, that’s when his push in WWE ended for good.
“I get a phone call from [former WWE Vice President of Talent Relations] Jane Geddes and like I told [podcast co-host Pat Buck] before, she texted me or emailed me at some point earlier in the week to set up for this phone call. And I’m not even going to go into depth about what I have on this because it’s not worth it for the podcast. She finally gives me a call that I was waiting for because now I know I’m playing with the devil on every step of the way now from this point forward, and she tells me, ‘Ryan, this phone call is off the record’ and I go, ‘okay’ and she goes, ‘do you want your standing in this company to remain good? Do you want your push to continue?’ was essentially what she told me. And I said, ‘yes, of course, why wouldn’t it?’ She goes, ‘we need you to drop the lawsuit against Dr. Herscovici immediately.’
“And so, this was a multimillion dollar lawsuit, not against the WWE. It was against the doctor who did this surgery to me that caused all this damage that was an open and shut case from everything I was told from my team of attorneys. And I’m so angry with myself looking back at all of this, that I didn’t trust my instinct. Any time I’ve trusted my instinct, I’m fine. And, but, you have to remember, so she essentially just threatened me with my push and everything going on, getting the chance to live my dream, money, finally, at this point, I’m making really good money now and everything, so they waited till just the right time.
“I thought about it and I called the attorneys and there was I believe it was a three-year time limit or two-year, there’s some sort of statute of limitations of how long you have to file the lawsuit. We were getting near to that period or it was something. It wasn’t that far away. But the moment I agreed to, ‘okay, I will drop the lawsuit,’ and the moment that lawsuit expired, is when they started really f–king with me. Yes, where you saw that stop-and-go and you saw the seven straight losses.
“This is why it’s so in-depth with me, so deep, and so personal, and because not only did they just f–k with me from a creative standpoint, they cost me security for the rest of my life, something I had a right to follow through with based on what this guy did to me, the pain this f–king guy caused in me having to overcome all of this, and me trusting them to get an opportunity. And all I asked them was for an opportunity to let me go out there and get over.”
Yeah, that’ll do it. That’ll foster bitterness and anger for quite some time, in my estimation. Every time we think we’re getting to the end of Ryback’s scorched-earth campaign, he finds a whole new patch of earth to scorch that we weren’t even aware of. It’s amazing how one guy can have so many stories about being done dirty.
(h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcript)
