That Was It?

The storyline of Vince "resetting" things never happened because the story was to have Punk came out to continue his boring ass storyline by interrupting him before he could change anything. This happened what, 3 hours before Ryback even came out at the end? So exactly how is that Ryback's doing?

The exact same thing would've happened if Cena was healthy except it would've been Cena who came out instead (just like it would've been Cena to defend JR last week instead of Ryback). Vince not changing anything it because of Punk, not Ryback. It's a story to cement his heel status. Ryback is just a physical replacement for Cena since he's injured. The point of it was to cement Punk's heel status and get his opponent over.

I'm sure it's easy for you to fault everyone but Punk for CM Punk's incredibly boring storyline, but imo it's wrong to do so. It was already boring before they showed Ryback for an extra 5-60 seconds a night for a couple weeks as part of it.

And imo, Punk is the worst character in his own storyline right now. Everyone else is more interesting. Hayman, Vicne, Ryback, Cena, Foley, JR, even AJ. Punk just comes out and says and does the same shit over and over.

Your blame and anger are radically misplaced imo.

I was at Raw in Sacramento. Twenty minutes before Raw went on the air, thousands of fans were chanting "FEED ME MORE!"

When Ryback first showed up, the pop was huge. It was sustained. After he crushed Primo and Epico, the "FEED ME MORE!" chant was 50x bigger than it had been about 35 minutes earlier.

This literally happened, no shit: One hour into the broadcast, after Rey Mysterio and Sin Cara won their match, a family of four (wife, husband, two kids, one about six, the other about nine or ten) went up the aisle. About ten minutes later, they reappeared. They all had Ryback shirts in their hands, and during the next commercial break, all four got up and put their newly-purchased shirts on.

When Ryback returned late in the night, the place went ballistic. But it truly went apeshit when he finally, fleetingly, briefly, got his hands on CM Punk. It was as insane a crowd atmosphere as anything Raw has produced in a long time, I'm going to go out on a limb and say quite definitively. Now, you can credit CM Punk for being an effective heel, because that helped tremendously. You can credit the writers and Vince for putting together a strong, money segment. But you also have to give Ryback at least a fairly major portion of the credit, too, for getting over in the first place.

As I filed out of the building, there were dozens of fans in line, purchasing Ryback's shirt.

Difficult to read any of this as a "bust," exactly.

Annihilus said:

theyre playing the IWC like a fiddle.. a month ago you all hated him, now you're riding his dick because WWE is pushing him. tell me exactly what Ryback did to deserve that reaction? Nothing. Anybody else could've came out to Vince's rescue in that segment and gotten an equal reaction. Anybody. No really, ANYBODY.

The crowd was that hot because of the segment that was happening which built up to Vince needing someone to come out and save him. NOT because Ryback came out, they wouldve cheered if Osama Bin Laden came in for the save.

Also its known that WWE has plants starting Ryback chants, that was reported a while ago, so if anything it just means sheep like to join in on chants regardless of what is being chanted.

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You're kidding, right?

You generally bring forth good, solid thoughts into discussions but this time you're way off the mark. Firstly, there are actually a few of us who have been moderate and even objective with regards to Ryback and his push from the beginning. But even if I loathed him I wouldn't downplay how over he has become, so quickly, especially after actually experiencing it for myself live and in person.

You could have Tyson Kidd or Justin Gabriel or Kane or R-Truth or whoever you want run out there, I find it difficult to believe anyone but maybe 5-7% or so of the roster would have elicited the reaction Ryback did when he made the save for Vince. Is that partly due to some patient writing (for a change)? To tremendously helpful booking? To everything being placed together to pay off handsomely? Assuredly. But that is the point. Guys who really make it and break through and become stars are afforded all of these things. We haven't seen nearly enough of this in WWE these past few years! The only thing that resembles any of it is last year's Summer of Punk, and before that I guess we could go to Wade Barrett's rise as the leader of Nexus vs. Cena until WWE aborted that angle in gruesome fashion.

Austin benefited from it, in part thanks to Vince McMahon. Rock benefited from it, in part thanks to Austin. Triple H thanks to Foley. Batista thanks to Triple H.

This is what some of us have been saying all along. Stars aren't created in vacuums.

Begrudging Ryback because WWE actually had the wherewithal to put together a solid, simple, easily understood, reasonably captivating storyline?

I don't get it.