WWE fans are a difficult bunch to please. Sometimes, no matter how hard the company tries to push a certain star or certain concept, it will get thrown back in their face. This is what happened to Tensai: fans chanted Albert so much that his matches were taking a backseat to fans entertaining themselves. It also happened to Mark Henry: years after the Attitude Era ended, he still had to deal with Sexual Chocolate chants from fans, and also Kool-Aid comments from fans as well. In Rybacks case, he resembled former WCW and WWE star Goldberg in many ways. Both of them were bald, heavy-set wrestlers in the super-heavyweight class. Both were booked as dominant, unstoppable forces in the earlier parts of their careers. And both were (sometimes unfairly) accused of having less-than-stellar wrestling ability. Ryback even acknowledged the comparisons at one point, and it was rumored for a while that the two would actually compete against one another, which unfortunately never happened. Ryback was also accused on a few occasions of directly copying Goldbergs signature moves, including his Military Press dropped into a Powerslam. That, coupled with the WWE Universes boredom during some of his matches, caused those Goldberg chants to become commonplace. This translated as a sign that he wasnt getting over as much as they wanted. Despite the popularity of the Feed me more chants, there was often a noticeable Goldberg chant as well whenever Ryback was in the ring. To put it simply, fans played a part in destroying Rybacks push. But not even jaded and bored fans chanting Goldberg was as bad for Rybacks push as
Alexander Podgorski is a writer for WhatCulture that has been a fan of professional wrestling since he was 8 years old. He loves all kinds of wrestling, from WWE and sports entertainment, to puroresu in Japan.
He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Queen's University in Political Studies and French, and a Master's Degree in Public Administration. He speaks English, French, Polish, a bit of German, and knows some odd words and phrases in half a dozen other languages.
