10 Radical Ideas To Save Zack Ryder
4. The King Of Smackdown
It gets stranger, because at a certain point Ryder becomes the only member of the roster to be Smackdown exclusive.
One week Ryder appears on Smackdown… but he’s not booked. He just walks to the ring and refuses to leave until he gets a match. Once he gets one (against, let's say, Tyler Breeze or one of the Social Outcasts), he creams them, wins defiantly, and then leaves.
Next week, it’s the same thing. The week after, the same. By week four it's been a month of Ryder Is Smackdown, and he's not going anywhere.
One week, someone tries to book him onto RAW: he refuses to come out and forfeits the match. Backstage ten minutes later, Renee Young asks him where he was, and he simply states that he’s contractually obliged to come to RAW, but no one can make him wrestle. He's a Smackdown guy.
That backstage interview gets played the following week on Smackdown before his next match. He steamrollers his opponent: and as he’s celebrating, Mauro informs us at home that next week, Ryder will face Cesaro.
Cesaro beats the cr*p out of Ryder, but he won't lie down. The Swiss Superman begins to get frustrated, keeps telling him to stay down. Ryder refuses, telling him him “this is my show”.
Eventually Ryder gets a flurry of offence, and three close two-counts in a row, before Cesaro hulks up and demolishes him. Groggily standing up, Ryder allows Cesaro to shake his hand, but holds on, pulling him closer, the camera just picking up him reminding the big man, “this is my show”.
On commentary, Mauro grudgingly puts over the fact that there's no quit in this guy, while Lawler is a little less equivocal about the new Zack Ryder: he says he’s completely cuckoo.