The Pride is (Ry)Back!

*** WARNING: YOU ARE NOW ENTERING A WRESTLING NERD DISCUSSION ZONE *** PLEASE KEEP YOUR EYES AND EARS INSIDE OF KAYFABE AT ALL TIME *** Listen, Hosses aren’t for everyone. I’ll be the first to admit that. Some people, completely reasonable people who are good and kind, prefer the flip-spinners or mat technicians. Maybe they like a never ending stream of superkicks, or have an unhealthy obsessions with bridging out of pinning predicaments. Maybe they were stuffed in lockers by the football team, were only allowed to watch the first hour of Nitro going up or have some sort of overarching problem with overactive pituitary glands. Whatever their reasons, while entirely legitimate, are fundamentally irrelevant to how wonderful it is to have Ryback, well, Ry-back.

Ryback — who even before Daniel Bryan, had piqued the interest of the WWE Universe as a potential, if probably temporary, replacement for John Cena as the (as he puts it) “guy who runs the place” — is one of the few performers that the WWE completely muffed the punt on. While he’s no spring chicken at 32, he’s still a year younger than a significant amount of performers ahead of him like Dolph Ziggler, Cesaro and The Miz. Which is to say that there is definitely time to make him a major star going forward, especially with the reaction the crowd had for him coming back.

When fans WANT TO root for someone, it’s worth its weight in gold. And people want to root for Ryback not just because he’s a big and scary bruiser, much in the same way that they don’t just hate Rusev because he’s Russian. It’s because they are both the perfect combination of larger-than-life and entirely real: There’s a sense of facts mixing with legend to create magic with these two, who — especially with Rusev in the ring and Ryback out of it — have established that they are highly capable performers in avery real and tangible ways, all while maintaining an air of beautiful cartoonishness about them.

Getting a chance to engage with something that is pleasing superficially (and viscerally) being created by performers that have within them the ability to not just reward us for the engagement but continue to build on it in a meaningful way is the epitome of being a wrestling fan. And, the Big Guy has been trying to do that since he came back in the company as one of the hottest commodities this side of Ultimate Warrior, only to be derailed by rough booking and the rise of CM Punk’s historical title reign.

There have been subtle (if still public) things that hint to Ryback having the kind of personality that fans will be able to engage with on a level that we don’t really get with most performers who try to build a mystique around themselves, like his Step Brothers’ singlet as a member of RybAxel, his glorious troll work on Twitter and even the jokes he makes in his consistently (if entirely too few) appearances on commentary.

Ryback doesn’t feel the need to play a character as much as he feels the need to entertain the crowd, and while he will NEVER be great, he’s turned himself into enough of a good worker that he can be 50% of a very good match, something Edge was able to ride to one of the great careers in history because of his incredible personality and willingness to do whatever it took to give the People What They Want. And if you didn’t hear the crowd last night, they are telling exactly what that is: Feed Me More.*** WARNING: YOU ARE NOW EXITING A WRESTLING NERD DISCUSSION ZONE *** PLEASE ENJOY YOUR COMPLIMENTARY SONIC CHILI CHEESE PRETZEL DOG MILKSHAKE ON THE WAY OUT***

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