Former WWE star Ryback recently took to his podcast, “Conversations With the Big Guy,” to talk about several professional wrestling topics.
Here are the highlights:
The size of payouts for working WrestleMania:
Well you want to be on the main show on that, especially now. And I don’t know what the payouts are now, but obviously guys now are making more downsides than they have been in any period in recent history. It definitely plays a part, that WrestleMania payday is the best payday of the year. But again, into my time there, we got f**ked over quite a bit. My first one with Mark was decent.
It was my best singles payout I’d ever gotten, which was still way under than it probably should have been from what other guys in that position in years past had probably made. And then I did — they put me, and again, that was my story, doing the pre-shows for the other four [WrestleManias] or whatever it was that I did, and they knew that drove me crazy. Those payouts sucked. That’s just – that’s being honest.
His poor payout for being on the WrestleMania 30 pre-show:
One of my lowest payouts of the year was WrestleMania [30 in] New Orleans where we did the tag match with Swagger and Cesaro, Usos, Primo and Epico and me and [Curtis] Axel. That four-way tag, or whatever. That was — no joke — I think one of my lowest payouts of the year, PPV-wise.
No rhyme or reason, which it should have been — technically should have been should have been my highest PPV, probably, of the year still being WrestleMania. So you never know what they’re going to do or what’s going on with each guy. But typically if you’re on WrestleMania, you’re looking forward to a pretty decent payday. So, every talent should want to be a part of that no doubt.
The disparity between his WrestleMania 29 and 30 checks:
That match [on WrestleMania 29] was either for sixty-something thousand or seventy-something thousand. Because there might have been some other things figured in for that payout week of that. But the total check with WrestleMania figured in was like seventy-something thousand. Which is not — there’s guys that make way more than that.
And for that profile for literally working on top for that year, that was a low amount. Grateful for it nonetheless. And then I want to say that WrestleMania in New Orleans was something like 1500 bucks or something ridiculous. That was the year of the punishment year that I took, where that was the lowest amount I had ever made working there.
And I worked more than year, was involved with everything. Worked main events with Axel on certain things on live events, but on TV we were — it was a very odd period. It’s a huge difference.
Also Read: Ryback Talks Matt Riddle Having Heat for Calling out Brock Lesnar
H/T 411Mania for the transcriptions
