Ryback on John Cena being a ‘piece of s***’ and ‘p****’ wrestlers who don’t work out

Perhaps fittingly for someone trying to break into the motivational speaker/life guru business, Ryback is not afraid to speak his mind.

Cynics (including myself, on occassion) would say he’s just trying to keep his name on the lips of wrestling fans. And given that every episode of his podcast, Conversation with the Big Guy, seems to have a sensational soundbite, it’s hard to say that’s not the case.

The latest example of this is an anti-John Cena rant. The topic of Cena-as-backstage-politician came up again recently when Alex Riley alluded to issues he had with the 15 time world champ (while declining to go into specifics) during a recent interview with Jim Ross on JR’s podcast, The Ross Report. As you can see from the quotes below, transcribed from episode 20 of CwtBG by Wrestling Inc, the Big Guy sides with A-Ry on this:

John [Cena is] blocked on my Twitter. I blocked him, he’s legit [blocked], I blocked him a long time [ago]. He [has] been a piece of s*** to me since Day One. And people, the guy, I was nothing but nice and respectful to him and I know Alex Riley just came out and [admitted he had issues with Cena] and when people hear what really happened with that, they’re going to lose their s***. Like, and I know, I have a pretty good idea of what happened with that and the guys in WWE. And, one, it’s f***ing hilarious. And, two, it’s hilarious what people will find out about John. So he used to s***-talk me when I was in the ring. I remember I was in there against Mark Henry. You’ve got to remember, I came up with all these guys in developmental and I know everyone who’s sitting backstage. No, John [used to talk trash], I used to be back there for John when Riley was in the ring, when the company was f*cking with him because John was hot at him because of what happened and all this.

But John would sit back there and bury Riley in front of everybody for no reason, and Alex Riley is f***ing money and he was money from Day One. Busted his ass, had awesome theme music, worked his ass off, went out there and got a reaction from the people, but because of John Cena and I swear to God, I swear to f***ing God, because of John Cena, his career is over in the WWE for no f***ing reason outside of John and his personal issues. Unbelievable.

But wait! There’s more! Cena wasn’t just a “piece of s***” to Ryback and Riley, he was also such a threat to WWE that Triple H had to create NXT to counteract his influence!

John comes from that [mentality of], ‘well, we’re going to push one guy down your f***ing throats.’ No, you push who the crowd is behind. He has been poison to the [professional] wrestling industry. I told [podcast co-host Pat Buck] this before. We talked about this before. And again, this is my opinion, but I think I’m pretty accurate on this is I think he [has] done so much harm for so long to new talent to getting [over], breaking out, over there.

I had my experiences, and other talents up there have their experiences, that I think Hunter finally had to say, ‘what the f*** do I need to do?’ And I think he started with the NXT thing and bring up all these NXT guys and protecting the f*** out of them. There [are] so many guys now that John just can’t f***ing pick his battle with one guy because there are nine other guys that are hot on his [heels]. Do you know what I mean? And he [has] been surpassed now and so Hunter’s brilliant if that’s what he did to get rid of the f***ing Cena problem.

There you have it. While this obviously has already generated a number of headlines, Ryback’s a few years late from this being a popular stand, as ever since his United States title run in 2015, Cena’s become a pretty highly regarded figure to all kinds of wrestling fans. So this probably won’t help him in our “Let’s say nice things about” feature. But something tells me the Big Guy doesn’t care.

And, hey, there are things I’m sure Cena and Ryback agree on...