Posted in: Sports, TV, WWE | Tagged: ryback, wrestling, wwe
Was Ryback Right About WWE Restricting His Twitter Reach?
Like most members of the Internet Wrestling Community, we have frequently mocked former WWE star Ryback for his outrageous social media posts, such as the time he suggested his supplements were more effective at preventing coronavirus infections than officially recommended safety protocols, or the time he lashed out at the makers of Gatorade for not using the same quality ingredients he uses in his supplements, or the time he complained that Amazon was making him test his supplements for drugs. And we stand by mocking Ryback for all of those things and more. But in the most shocking wrestling news story you'll read all week, one of Ryback's outrageous claims and accusations may have actually turned out to be… true?!
Ryback has long claimed that his social media reach was being unfairly suppressed by WWE, explaining why he has so many followers but so little interaction on his tweets and other social media posts. Today, he posted the receipts in the form of a message from Twitter responding to his complaints and a legal letter purportedly from WWE explaining the company's assertion that Ryback is illegally using WWE trademarks on his social media.
As you can see, in the first screenshot, Twitter appears to tell Ryback that his account is indeed restricted because it's in violation of Twitter policies. The second photo shows a letter stating that Ryback's use of the trademarks Ryback, The Big Guy, and Feed Me More (which was both is WWE slogan and the name of his supplement brand) are a violation of his previous WWE contract and demanding Ryback turn over his social media accounts and Feed Me More website to WWE.
Bleeding Cool has not independently verified the veracity of the screenshots, but they do appear to be in line with what we know about both social media companies' compliance with corporate copyright claims and WWE's own feelings on its wrestlers' social media accounts. We reached out to WWE for comment, but they have not responded as of press time.
But it looks like the old adage may be true: you're not paranoid if they really are out to get you! If so, we may owe Ryback an apology. Sorry about that, Big Guy. We're still not buying those supplements though.