Former WWE Superstar Jaxson Ryker was at the center of a political controversy last year when he publicly expressed support for Donald Trump during country-wide protests about police brutality.
Ryker recently sat down on ‘Wrestling With The Faith‘ podcast to discuss this time period. Check out the highlights below.
On the controversy and turmoil that ensued after Ryker published the tweet publicly supporting Trump:
“I’m sitting on my couch and within a matter of — I’m gonna say 15 minutes, my phone starts to just blow up. I start to get random phone calls from random numbers. I’m like, what’s going on? And my wife goes ‘what, what’s going on with your phone?’ I mean, literally, it’s like the end of the world had happened. Within a matter of an hour or so I’m getting death threats. I’m getting cell phone calls. If I can number the amount of voicemails that came over my phone from that time it happened for at least a good week. Well over 100 voicemails [and] people threatening my family, my address within a matter of an hour or so was tweeted out. My new address. People were saying they were gonna come burn down my house. People said they were gonna come murder my family. Dude, it was the most extreme thing I’ve ever been through to the point of the old Chad back in his 20s wanting to come out, you know what I mean?”
On not feeling bad for himself or wanting any sympathy after the tweet:
“I’m not going to ask for anybody to defend me. What I would say was folks that I worked with that I thought were my friends or thought were my companions. were quick to turncoat. There were some tweets that went out from coworkers. Not gonna name any names, don’t think it’s important. But there was tweets that went out from co-workers that fueled the fire. I was like, ‘What in the world?’ Like the majority of you guys know who I am as a person and for you to you to do this to make this look like this tweet was some kind of racial hate speech bigot, whatever you want to call it. That’s really what started to bother me. So yeah, man. I mean, my address was tweeted out [and] people threatening my family. It was ridiculous. I mean, people calling my phone like I said, random numbers. So of course, you know, it’s 2022 and now it’s very easy to access all this stuff and I was just blown away. Like I was sitting here on my couch and my wife once she found out the tweet, even she was like, ‘there was nothing wrong with that tweet, like what is going on?’”
On him feeling that people within WWE began turning on him afterwards:
“There was certain, quote unquote friends who would text me or call me and one of them who I respect and still do [and] worked with him many times, he told me he was disappointed and I called him and I said, ‘why are you disappointed in me?’ I said, ‘this is my views, not like I said anything wrong.’ And he was just like, ‘I just expected more from you.’ And I’m like, ‘because I don’t support who you support. You know, that’s what you’re talking about here, dude.’ It’s like, these cancel culture, folks, and you see it in Hollywood all the time. You know, certain actors getting canceled because somebody they support or things they stand for, whether it be anti-abortion or whatever, but the same ones who were screaming, you know, my body my choice, like, oh, I can go murder a baby. They’re the same ones over here going, ‘Oh, you need to get this vaccine or you need to do this.’ But so what are we doing here? We’re just dividing the country, man and we’ve seen that over the past few years. I think the tweet just got knocked way out of proportion.”
On what Ryker thinks the real issue was:
“I’ll say this, and I’ve always said this, the problem that I see with the Trump thing is what happened was — not everybody and now I’ll try to tread lightly when I say this. The Christians, the American Christian started looking to him (Trump) as their savior. So I heard a pastor say this one time we’ve taken the cross and replaced it with the American flag or a Trump flag. So he became people’s savior and you see it now when you’re riding down the street people have a ‘F Biden’ flag flying at their house and I’m like ‘what are we doing right now, man?’ Like, you know, can we just drop it? I mean, so the thing is, I never made Donald Trump my savior, Jesus Christ as my Savior, you know, I mean, so in the end when Biden got elected, do I agree? Absolutely not. But you know what, still pray for the man, he’s not my savior. The Lord has a purpose and a reason for all this stuff, dude.”
Huge thanks to WrestlingNews.co for the transcriptions above. You can listen to the episode featuring Ryker below.
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