Ryback, who has legally changed his name to that from Ryan Reeves, recently spoke out about his past issues with CM Punk in an interview with Sports Illustrated. Back in 2014, CM Punk made it known on a podcast that he didn’t like Ryback and thought he was an unsafe worker. Ryback feels that Punk’s comments were untrue and hurt his career.
“Those Punk comments did a lot of damage to me,” he said. “CM Punk has a tremendous following. When you have as many followers as he has, and you say something about somebody, they’re going to believe everything you say. To this day, I don’t know why Punk tied me in with his whole thing against the WWE. I feel like part of it was he was his unhappiest with the company when he was working with me, and I kind of got tied into all of it.”
With CM Punk’s large fan base turned against him, Ryback felt that WWE management didn’t have his back. While Ryback got support from his peers, he says WWE should have told fans that Punk’s comments were untrue.
“I was always upset that the WWE never went out of its way to say, ‘That’s not true about this guy,’” said Ryback. “Guys like Jericho, who have been in the ring with me, went to bat for me, and I can’t thank them enough for that – but why couldn’t the company do that, especially when I took the hit on that? That always bothered me that they never tried to clear that up.”
Ryback noted that his imitation of CM Punk’s entrance at Payback in Chicago was to get more heat from the crowd, and he felt it worked. Ryback noted that management was “furious” at him for the imitation.
“Punk and I are two entirely different human beings, but I think we shared some of the same viewpoints toward the WWE as far as business,” Ryback concluded.
You can read his entire interview at SI.com.
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