It’s Time For Another Ryback Push

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It’s been just around a year since Ryback has been a focal part of WWE programming, but it seems like it’s been even longer than that. Over the past year, The Big Guy has had to deal with a lack of direction with his character, as well as more than a few stop and start angles, including a failed pairing with Paul Heyman.

After months and months of bouncing around, it looks as if he’s finally caught some traction. Pairing with Curtis Axel (another failed Heyman experiment) to form RybAxel, the pairing has become one of the funnier parts of WWE today. Their macho, stereotypical jock attitude has gained them quite a few fans, but their pairing undoubtedly has an expiration date.

While Ryback continues to get loud chants of “Feed Me More”, Axel just hasn’t been able to capture the crowd. Sure, he’s pretty solid between the ropes, but nothing he does really stands out. It just appears as if he has next to no charisma, and that doesn’t bode well for the person that he’s paired with.

Once Ryback breaks away from Axel (hopefully sooner rather than later), it will be time for him to shine once again. As we saw during the Intercontinental Championship battle royal at Battleground, his popularity is growing once again. At one point during the match he had a stare-down with Sheamus and the noise was deafening. Chants for him rang throughout the arena, which the higher-ups certainly took note of.

While some may be afraid to push him to the upper echelon that he was made home, his failure there was creative’s fault more than his own. He clearly wasn’t ready for the spotlight of the main event, with his limited move-set and hesitation on the mic, and he wasn’t booked as the powerful force that he was supposed to portray.

The constant squash matches got him going, but once he got to the top level of competition, he was losing all the time. Whether it was the two consecutive losses to CM Punk to kick off his main event PPV career, or three losses against the Shield and John Cena (1 against The Shield, two against Cena) that followed, he really had no chance to maintain any credibility as a top player.

Following a brief feud with Chris Jericho in which he picked up a PPV win (Jericho putting someone over? No way!), the pay-per-view losing continued, once again against CM Punk. Yet again it was two PPV’s in a row, with the second one being followed by a Street Fight loss the next night on RAW.

His downward spiral finally hit it’s rock bottom with a loss in a dreadful match to Mark Henry at Survivor Series, and by this time it appeared that his days of ever competing in the main event scene were over. Obviously, if WWE is going to go ahead with another push of Ryback, they’re going to have to do things differently than the first time around.

His improved confidence both in the ring and on the mic will add some credibility, but he can’t go out there and lose every PPV match that he’s in. A lot of the time wins and losses don’t really matter all that much in the WWE, but this isn’t the case with Ryback. After losing so many important matches, he needs to win to show that he’s again a dominant force.

The perfect opponent for him to start off with would be the man he squared up with at Battleground: Sheamus. A feud over the United States Championship would finally give the belt some much-needed relevance, and it would give both characters something to do. Hopefully in this scenario, WWE would do the right thing and have Ryback be the fan favorite and Sheamus the heel, as these roles seem best suited for both men.

With his confidence and in-ring ability both on the rise, it’s time for WWE to give Ryback another shot at the main event. During his first run, he was one of the more popular superstars in all of wrestling and there’s no reason to think he couldn’t reclaim that position, especially considering the reactions he’s been getting.

Let The Big Guy win, WWE.

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