10 Life-Saving Wrestling Moments
8. Ryback Receives Rare Praise
Ryback has a reputation as an unsafe and unintelligent professional wrestler.
CM Punk incited this conversation, in 2014, and it's understandable. He trusted Ryback with his body, and Ryback betrayed that trust by dropping Punk on concrete and not through the intended table.
"Uh-oh spaghettios," Ryback was reported to have said, as he hit his own forehead.
This reputation was compounded when Mark Henry also labelled him as dangerous earlier this year, echoing an assessment made by Dolph Ziggler, who claimed in 2020 that working with Ryback was considered "community service" - something he frequently tried to get out of.
It was also compounded by Ryback's various, hilarious gaffes. It was rather easy to buy the idea that Ryback was clumsy because he never presented himself as a thoughtful and clever human being. He thought Terminator II was so-called because there were two Terminators in the film.
"The one ring to rule them all? But it's called The Lord of the Rings!" Ryback wrote in his one star Letterboxd review.
And yet, Ryback saved Kalisto from serious harm at Payback 2016. Kalisto's convoluted twisting aerial was set to land him head-first on the apron until Ryback caught him and manoeuvred him into the barricade. A broken clock is right two times a day.
"How can that be? It's broken!"