5 booking mistakes WWE made with Ryback
You know the way everyone perceives Braun Strowman in WWE today? Well, five years ago, that’s how a lot of people saw Ryback.
The man from Sin City had defeated enhancement talents all over the country in the summer of 2012, much like "The Monster Among Men" in 2016, and while Braun regularly demanded "more competition", Ryback would ask for the same with his catchphrase "Feed Me More".
The major difference, though, is that Strowman's rise to the top has happened gradually over the last couple of years, whereas Ryback was elevated into the main-event picture seemingly overnight – but he didn’t stay there for long.
In this article, we look at five booking mistakes that WWE made with “The Big Guy” during his four-year run as the Ryback character.
#1 WrestleMania 29 match finish
The build to Ryback vs. Mark Henry at WrestleMania 29 was entertaining enough. Henry had just returned from a lengthy injury and had been booked as a legitimate monster who nobody could defeat one-on-one, while Ryback still seemed like a genuine threat to the former Heavyweight champion despite a run of pay-per-view losses.
Then came one of the worst finishes to a match in WrestleMania history, when the man formerly known as "Big Hungry" showed an extraordinary feat of strength to lift Henry onto his shoulders for his Shell-Shock finishing manoeuvre, only to collapse under the weight of the “World’s Strongest Man”, who simply pinned him for the 1-2-3.
Ryback exacted a tiny bit of revenge by Shell-Shocking Henry post-match, but the outcome is what mattered, and the outcome was downright terrible.