The Zack Ryder Thread

[Alexis Terry]

2011 was a remarkable year for Zack. He went from Supestars jobber to United States Champion all while starting a "Ryder Revolution" via social media. Yes, Ryder was over with the crowd and no thanks to WWE, at all. He did it himself and many would say that is an accomplishment nobody can take away from him. WWE handed him nothing and he turned it into something. But, ladies and gents - that was the downfall.

A lot of "smarks" believe WWE has a stigma that if your not created by the WWE, if your not a guy WWE gets behind, or a hand picked prospect by Vince you shouldn't get over or you wont be given the avenue to succeed. I never believed that, until 2012..

In 2012, WWE blatantly pulled the rug from underneath Zack when he was getting hot. Many can say in early January 2012, Zack Ryder was probably the 4th most over babyface, behind Cena, Punk, and Sheamus. However, WWE quickly took the US Title off Ryder in less than a month, book Ryder in ridiculous love angles involving Eve, Kane, and Cena (Zack being left in the backburner) and for the rest of the year we barely saw Ryder.

The biggest insult to me came when WWE a few weeks ago had one of those "WWE Did you know?" trivas where they left Ryder off as one of the most followed WWE Superstars, even labeling Miz as one of them when Ryder has close to 200,000 more followers (Now a million +)

Anyways, the reason for this whole thread is because as of right now, Zack Ryder's remastered "Hoeski" single is in the Top 100 Pop songs chart, a huge accomplishment for someone who by no means is a pop artist.

Ryder has over 1,000,000 followers on Twitter, his now ended Youtube Show was the most watched on the WWE Channel, his merchandise is still one of the top selling, and he now has a Top 100 hit with "Hoeski". Sadly, I think the ship has sailed on a Ryder push, but what do you guys think? When will WWE learn that Ryder = Money?

[Leon Cashmere]

To the WWE's credit, he had some awful matches when he was champion and got that push, he didn't do himself any favors, got complacent IMO.

[PWXonline]

I never really like Ryder to be honest. His music was stupidly catchy though..

[Elijah Black]

Ryder's de-push is typical of a lot of problems with WWE booking, namely they made him collateral damage in a Cena feud (even though Ryder wasn't the guy feuding with Cena, Kane was) and then didn't even consider what to do with him afterwards and let him drop like a stone.

The first problem was he was getting beaten shitless by Kane every week, and confined to a wheelchair to sell the beating for several weeks - which made him look weak for two reasons, firstly because he was getting beat down on a weekly basis without mustering much of a comeback that made him look like a total jobber, and secondly the fact he was confined to a wheelchair for a few weeks made him look like a loser because numerous WWE stars take similar beatings but don't show the ill effects from one week to the next, with Cena being the worst offender for this. It has to be said the sole reason Ryder was sacrificed was just so Cena wouldn;t get beaten down weekly, because WWE are terrified of the notion that Cena is made to look anything less than superhuman, which is ironic given Cena's ability to make his opponents look like outmatched jobbers.

The second problem was that, after the Cena/Kane feud ended with Cena being kept strong there was a potential Ryder/Kane feud they could have run into WM that would've been a solid addition to the undercard, the feud had already been built, and if Ryder won the match he would've got his heat back as well as a new shot of momentum. Instead, they threw together a Kane/Orton match, whilst Ryder was booked in the annual multi-man tag for people WWE want on the show but couldn't be bothered to book any angles for them to be on the show, and in that match Ryder ate the fall and looked like a complete doofus in doing so.

That's what killed his push dead in its tracks. He wasn't the first, he won't be the last, but WWE are utterly inept when it comes to booking consistency in the midcard.