The US Airways Center recently interviewed Ryback to promote tonight’s SmackDown taping at the arena. During the interview, Ryback was asked about wrestling as Skip Sheffield when he first came up.
Ryback noted that Dusty Rhodes approached him in developmental and wanted him to try something different since he heard that he was funny. Ryback said that he came up with the Skip Sheffield character as a joke that turned on him because it got over in NXT and stuck with him when he made his WWE debut.
“I was like, ‘this sucks,’ but at the same time I was having fun,” Ryback said. “But it was not me. It was all a joke. I had never even been to College Station, Texas, where I billed myself from. But it allowed me to open up and do things in the ring that I’d never had the opportunity before, trying to be so serious. And it got me called up.
“But I remember (WWE Chairman) Vince McMahon telling me, just two or three weeks into (my call up), ‘You’re not going to be doing this. You’re going to make me millions and millions of dollars being yourself. I want you to slowly get away from this. Don’t do it overnight, but slowly get away from this.’ I’m thinking to myself, ‘Well, hell, now I kind of like doing this, because it got me up here. Now I’ve got to start all over again.'”
Ryback said that he started dropping the goofy aspects of his character when the Nexus angle started, but was still sidelined with the name, which he knew was not a main event name.
“Luckily I broke my ankle and leg and was out a year and a half, and got to come back as Ryback. So it all worked out.”
