10 Radical Ideas To Save Zack Ryder
Astonishingly, the man’s still more or less over: now let’s keep him that way.
Normally when I write a ‘Radical Ideas To Save’ article on an underutilised wrestler, it’s a list of sometimes contradictory ideas, any one of which might reverse the character’s downhill plunge and get them over with the audience sufficiently that the last few months of booking seem like a bad dream.
Zack Ryder’s a bit of a weird case, however. When we talk about ‘saving’ Zack Ryder, we’re not talking about some awesome Hail Mary booking to get him noticed. The WWE buried him six feet underground weeks after he won the US title in late 2011, and he’s been clawing at the coffin lid for four years now.
And yet, every time he appears on TV, the crowd sit up and go 'OH HEY'. His victory at WrestleMania 32 made grown men pump their fists in the air like they were in the bloody Breakfast Club.
I made a joke when it happened about how younger WWE fans checking out the ladder match would be asking their parents whether this ‘Zack Ryder’ was one of those guys from New Japan that everyone’s been going on about.
I got a death threat. For taking the p*ss out of Zack Ryder.
For the first time, I'm going to set out a ten step plan instead of coming up with ten separate ideas. If we're gonna do this, let's do this properly: let’s keep Zack Ryder over, to the extent that it’s virtually impossible to take him off TV and bury him again.
10. Change The Damn Music
Oh, radio. Tell me everything you know.
I’ll tell you what I know, radio: In 2016, a cheesy pop song about cruising the boardwalk picking up ‘babes’ is not a theme song for a grown man, much less a grown man who needs to persuade Important People that he’s worth taking seriously.
What’s more, the ultra-confident playah of the lyric, the man looking in the mirror and liking what he sees, who could be a rock star, who’s going to wear his pants real tight (yes, those are the real lyrics): that’s not Zack Ryder in 2016. That was barely Zack Ryder in 2011 - the guy was a massive geek who wore a headband to the ring and used the word ‘bro’ more often than Vince ‘Bro’ Russo, bro.
I’m not saying replace the song with some generic sturm und drang speed metal that makes it sound like a human headache is hitting the ring - but something a little more respectable than Justin Bieber’s sloppy seconds would be just fine.
Personally, I like the idea of using The Wildhearts’ ‘Vanilla Radio’. The transition to a song that says how sh*tbox the radio is these days: that tells a story.