Quote:
Originally Posted by MatthewAllenHanso
I hate this "most over guys on the roster" thing about Ryder.
His big moments were a few in SUPER smark heavy audiences. Then two weeks later hes in Indiana and no one gives two fucks about him.
They gave his smark base a nice little payoff but No, he wasnt a long term star and he never did anything once he had the ball to keep it.
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There is one major hole in this "he's just a smark phenom" logic certain guys get: Kevin Owens.
I distinctly remember a post about Kevin Steen looking "like a fan". I believe it had some disparaging things to say about Tyler Black, too... but IN SPITE OF being a so-called indy darling because of his RoH stint, he is being booked like a million goddamn dollars in NXT. They could have easily said "fuck this guy" and he and Bull Dempsey could have easily had their roles reversed. Instead of burying him or letting him languish off camera, they piggybacked off of what fame he had.
Ryder got over on his own, and that translated into a miniscule increase in TV time. WwE has tried in the past to force feed guys with less EVERYTHING than Zack had going for him. John Cena was generic as they come on his debut, and he had no following and he eventually became marketed as "the man".
A misconception seems to be he should have been strapped to a rocket and instantly in contention to be WWE champion. Not the case.The issue is the head-in-the-sand mentality of WWE; "if we don't like it, it's unimportant". He basically did all the legwork. He got over in a way WWE didn't even really consider. Hell, until "Z!" got as huge as it did, WWE still acted like the internet was in the same state it was in about 1995... a non factor, loose collection of IWC neckbeard virgins banging away on keyboards in basements and college labs instead of this thing that almost everyone at their live shows has access to in their pockets all the time.
And even after this, you'd think they'd feature the guy more or put him in proper feuds. Instead, they job him out, which makes him look like a loser. Who wants to back a loser? They have Rosa dump him with no kind of "retaliation". Now he's a weak loser. He has less matches and more cameos in catering. Now he's a weak loser who can't even get a match. Why should we like this guy??? Instead of piggybacking off of what he had going for him and building him up to be a future star, they didn't do jack shit.
Yeah, "two weeks later in Indiana no one gives a fuck about him", because WWE didn't give a fuck about him. They didn't do anything with what they had. He could have been made into a bigger deal he made himself into, and the machine just didn't do it.
And it's so subjective, this argument, I mean. That comment in that post I barely remember shitting on Tyler Black... who is now WWE Champion. He didn't have the groundswell Ryder had, let alone do it on his own outside of WWE channels, and they pushed the guy. Over time. They gave him shit to do. Angles. Feuds. He wasn't counting lights on a regular basis. And now look at him, he's a big deal. He's the champ. He's the champ because the machine got behind him, and he wasn't even the most over guy in The Shield (neither was Reigns, and we all know where he's headed, one way or another).
Simply, they had a lot less they needed to invest in the guy, and they just... didn't. This isn't "revisionist history", this is one of many dropped balls by the company itself. Ryder, Cody, Kofi, and Ziggler should have all been selling seats as legitimate stars by now. That "moster heel" push that Rusev got could have been done a couple months sooner by Big E. Cesaro should be bigger than his tag team with Kidd as he was on track for until... WWE just got bored with him. Fandango's theme song becomes an iTunes sensation and crowds are singing along with it and "Fandangoing"... and WWE doesn't decide to push this as a face turn angle idea until over two years later, after that iron has cooled down significantly (people still do it, but it was freakin' HUGE at the time). As entertaining as the joke character Curtis Axel has become is, it would have been better for everyone if they kept him as a star-in-the-making enforcer instead of meatshield bitch.
They had control over these perceptions. They could have improved the standing in the eyes of fans for of a lot of their roster. But they chose not to.
They had the power to snowball Zack's popularity into something huge. Instead, they not only met it with apathy, but acted as if it was "his fault" he wasn't made into a bigger star.