10 Radical Ideas To Save Zack Ryder
1. Affirmative Action
By now, anyone with their wits about them has recognised a pattern: a former clean cut babyface turned unstable, hot-tempered but eccentric heel finds within himself a surprising intensity in the ring and begins to win matches.
Yes, it’s the 2012 Daniel Bryan comedy heel persona. Over-the-top and bafflingly odd, the heel can do heelish things and say heelish things but remain sufficiently entertaining that the door’s open wide for fans to turn him babyface if they choose.
It’s a fine line, obviously. To begin with, all it’ll take to go the fully villainous route is cheap-shotting the wrong person at the wrong time. Nonetheless, the objective in all of this is twofold.
On the one hand, it’s to maximise whatever television time Ryder gets and ensure that however long it is that he remains onscreen, and whatever he’s asked to do, the crowd remembers.
On the other hand, it provides a clear path to getting noticed and staying noticed with an idiosyncratic character that keeps people guessing as well as entertained.
From there, provided crowd reactions remain consistent, Ryder can either devolve to become a proper WWE heel - beating up beloved babyfaces, cheating to win, having friends and a consistent moral code - or he can continue to walk that fine line, as Bryan, Eddie Guerrero and others did before him.
But really, as I mentioned at the beginning, the only true goal in all of this is to make sure that WWE don’t lose track of Ryder again to the extent that they did between 2012 and 2016.
After all, it’s difficult to bury something that won’t stay down.