Former WWE Superstar Ryback was recently interviewed by Dave LaGreca and Larry Dallas for Sirius XM’s Busted Open radio show. Here are the highlights:
On the storyline he pitched to Vince McMahon for a Brock Lesnar match at WrestleMania: “The last year I was in WWE, myself and Hunter, myself and Vince, had a lot of conversations about the contract and creative issues. One of the ideas I had – and there were several WWE Superstars I am friends with I shared the idea with – they thought it was an amazing, creative angle. I went to Vince. I had been asking for Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania the last three years. I told Vince you have to build this up properly. I told him it will break records if you build it up properly. I go, you need to let me go away for six months. I live in Las Vegas. MMA is hugely insanely popular. It’s the breeding ground. Let me join a training camp full time for six months. We’ll make it look like I’m about to go do a real fight. I’ll come back and challenge Brock Lesnar to a fight at WrestleMania. The way that I look, people already buy into it. Now I ad the other skills into the mix and people already Lesnar’s MMA background. Now I say we have a WrestleMania-worthy match. Vince, it went right over his head. I remember sitting there dumbfounded. Jesus Christ, you can’t f—ing be this out of touch! Maybe he didn’t want me to go away for six months.”
On CM Punk getting into MMA: “I give Punk a lot of credit for the courage he showed, but they made key mistakes with him. He’s not a physical specimen where he’s going to manhandle anybody. He needs to really really have his cards lined up for that to go well, and he bit off more than he can chew going up against Mickie Gall for his first fight. There’s no going back. The UFC is the elite. It’s not like he had any amateur fights. I believe I’m a truly entirely different human being. I’ll dedicate myself 8-12 hours a day if I choose to go that route. That would be one of my reasons to f—ing show [WWE what they missed out on with the Lesnar idea] whether they gave a sh– or not. That would be the easiest, quickest way to restore lost momentum and going out there and doing it for real.”
