Ryker further dives into the fallout of his pro-Donald Trump tweet.
Chad Lail f.k.a. Jaxson Ryker has spoken at length about the tweet he sent out in support of then-President Donald Trump as the protests were going on in reaction to George Floyd’s murder.
He has dove into the backlash he received online from his ex co-workers in WWE. He further spoke on that on the ‘Wrestling for the Faith’ podcast.
Ryker stated that after the tweet gained traction and the comments came rolling in, he got in contact with Kevin Owens who publicly reacted to Ryker’s comment. Ryker asked Westin Blake to play middle man to get him in contact with Owens and when they talked, Ryker said they agreed to disagree but he appreciated Owens for being willing to talk to him.
He chatted with Mustafa Ali and stated that when he came back to TV in late 2020, Ali came up to him and apologized for going public with his reaction to the tweet. Ryker also had a conversation with Xavier Woods, who he’s known since the early 2000s. He added that there was one person who texted him to express that they did not feel it was the right time for him to send that tweet and he disagreed, but appreciated that individual for not going public. Ryker feels it would have fizzled out had the wrestlers not added on.
Well, I’ll go ahead and say it because I don’t really care but, when it all happened (fallout from Ryker’s pro-Donald Trump tweet), one of the guys who came out and just kind of blasted was Kevin Owens and and I instantly knew that (Westin) Blake and Kevin were close, they had talked and stuff like that. I texted Blake, I said, ‘Hey dude, do me a favor, ask Kevin if I can have his number.’ So, lo and behold, Kevin said, ‘Yeah, sure’ so Kevin and I actually talked one night right after this happened for probably 30 minutes. Basically agreed to disagree. But Kevin even came out and said, ‘Dude, I’ve said crazy stuff in my career.’ So, he was one of ‘em and we had already talked. But the only other one that really came up and talked to me was (Mustafa) Ali because Ali I think had said something about the tweet when it had all happened and he had come up to me that night at the arena and respectfully man, ‘Hey dude, we all got our own opinions and I just wanna apologize that I had said anything on Twitter about it. I should have just come to you man-to-man.’ I was like, ‘Dude, that’s completely okay.’ I was like, ‘I don’t hold beef or grudges’ and you know, another one was — he and i had talked on the phone was Xavier Woods because we’ve known each other since, gosh, 2006 and just, you know, put it under the table and kind of ironed things out but any of the other ones who were tough guys, quote-unquote, with my fingers here on Twitter, they didn’t have anything to say. It was like, ‘Hey man! Good to see you’ and just, listen, you know, whatever. The fake wrestling business, we know how it is. Hey, come here, let me give you a hug. I’m gonna stick this knife in your back. But you know, but those guys did and it’s not like Kevin and I were buddies and went out to dinner together. But, you know, it was a conversation we had and at least he was willing to talk to me.
There was one person in particular, the night the tweet went out, instead of getting on Twitter like all the other trolls, this person actually texted me, said, ‘Hey, I don’t understand why you would post that. But I think this is probably a bad time to do so’ and I respectfully said, ‘Man, I disagree. I posted stuff like this before. I didn’t say anything wrong.’ So that person, I appreciate just reaching out to me that night instead of just getting on Twitter and going, oh! Blah, blah, blah. Let’s throw fuel on the fire so people continue to threaten your family and threaten your career. That’s the thing that really got me was it’d probably fizzle out if it wasn’t for the superstars who I worked with adding fuel to the fire on Twitter because they wanted people to go, oh, we praise you because you don’t agree with Gunner. But, anyway…
There was another conversation that Ryker had with Mustafa Ali and it had to do with the RETRIBUTION group. Before Ryker began working on-screen with Elias, there were ideas thrown around for him to join RETRIBUTION and Ali spoke to him about it.
Ultimately, he’s glad that did not happen as he feels it would not have been a good fit.
Dude, funny because I guess it was December (2020). I’m sitting at home on a Saturday night, it’s 11 PM and I’m just chilling on the couch and I get a text from travel, WWE Travel, 11 o’clock at night, Saturday night. ‘Hey, they’re flying you into Raw for Monday. Your flight will be on Sunday’ so the next day at like, whatever, 2 or 3 and I’m like, ‘Okay. What am I doing? I need to know what to bring and all this stuff.’ So I have a 12 hour window, fly into Raw. We were in Orlando I believe, yeah, Orlando. Get there and for a couple weeks, there was ideas bouncing back and forth of putting me with the — oh man, what was that team’s name? That came out there with (Mustafa) Ali, remember those guys? You remember the name of that group?… Yeah, RETRIBUTION, because Ali had come up to me there at TV that first week I got back and said, ‘Hey, I think the plans are bring you in RETRIBUTION and kind of do some stuff with us’ and I’m like, ‘Alright, well, whatever man. Whatever gets me back in the mix.’ So the whole Elias thing didn’t come into play because I sat at TV. Dude, I came in for a month maybe? I’m trying to remember when Elias and I debuted together. I wanna say January… So I did sit for like two or three weeks because it was like the end of November, beginning of December when I flew back into Raw. So it was two or three weeks when I was just in limbo, sitting in the locker room going, ‘What’s going on?’ Really no word, the RETRIBUTION thing and then I came in one week and it was like, ‘Okay, what we’re gonna do is put you with Elias’ and then Elias and I started connecting and talking and I just was kind of his little security guy because people kept (interrupting) his music and all of that stuff so, their idea was to introduce me back into that mix. So it’s funny. I’m glad the RETRIBUTION thing didn’t happen because I mean, some of those guys went on to do some different stuff but it was just kind of, man, it kind of fizzled out after a while, you know? And I was like, that would have been a bad position for me so once again, the Lord’s hand was working in many different ways on that.
In November 2021, Ryker was released from WWE. Per Cagematch.net, his last listed match was in the summer of 2022.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Wrestling for the Faith with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
