10 Unusual Demands Made By Wrestlers
3. Ryback's Rule
If a broken clock is right twice a day, Ryback said one halfway clever thing once, and it was still pretty stupid.
When still under contract with WWE, the Big Guy in spring 2016 set the internet ablaze with his new mission statement: he wanted every WWE act to earn equal pay, irrespective of their place on the card.
This, per the man himself, is what derailed his contract renegotiations with WWE and ultimately led to his exit from the promotion. On his personal blog, he revealed that he wasn't sitting at home because of "money or a bus" because that was "settled months ago". By "settled," one can only infer that Vince angrily told him to rent a f*cking car like everybody else.
On the contrary, Ryback wrote:
"Why make the guy who is told to and agrees to lose earn less and sacrifice spots in big pay per view match ups etc."
There's a kernel of a well-reasoned argument in there. As he put it, the top stars already had the perk of high merch sales. Nobody wants to rep the catchphrase of a loser, after all. If not an entirely preposterous thing to suggest, from an ethical perspective, it was futile. Homer Simpson led a union in the Simpsons once, and the gag worked because he was Homer Simpson.
"I'm beginning to think Ryback was not the brilliant tactician I thought he was," Vince told Kevin Dunn as the Big Guy celebrated his win by rolling around his office on his sides.