Joey Ryan Details the Origin of His Penis Flip and How it Went Viral, Talks Treating It Seriously in the Ring

– On the latest Talk is Jericho, Joey Ryan talked about his (in)famous Penis Flip maneuver and how it came about. Ryan is controversial to say the least within the wrestling industry and without for the maneuver, which several people like Jim Cornette have condemned while others, including Mick Foley, have been big fans of and even taken the maneuver.

Highlights from the discussion, as well as the full podcast, are below:

On the origin of the penis flip: “So you know, obviously the character is very, my character is very porn star-esque. And then there’s this wrestler in DDT [Pro] named Danshoku Dino, who is — and the political correctness in DDT and in Japan is a little different. He plays a gay character, but he does very much the ‘I’m gonna freak out my opponents by being gay,’ by being over the top. Which, I mean, maybe I’m looking at it glass full, but I think, when I’m watching him, I’m like, ‘Oh, he’s so proud of being gay.’ I don’t see it as a negative, but maybe I’m just trying to justify it in my head. But you know what I mean? He’s very confidently gay … And so he does this thing where he wrestles and he grabs his opponent by the crotch, and the opponent [reacts like] ‘Why, why are you grabbing’ — and then he suplexes them or dragon screw leg lifts them by their penis. And so that’s kind of his thing there, and we’re gonna wrestle for the first time, we’re on opposite sides of a six-man tag. And they even did press conferences, like ‘Oh, the porn star guy is gonna wrestle our gay guy.’ It’s this whole big thing.

“And so we’re trying to come up with some ideas for it, and he pitches to me, and this is me giving him full credit for the idea … he suggests in broken English, ‘Maybe I grab you, but maybe you no-sell because American c**k is so big and so strong.’ Because he’s working with Japanese guys all the time, and he wants to play off the stereotype. And I was like ‘Okay, okay.’ So we come up with the idea where I bump him instead. And it’s the opening spot of this six-man tag, and we don’t think of it more than that. We go in, he grabs and I flip him, whatever, we go on, do the rest of the match.”

On the video going viral: “And now, I’m pretty self-critical when I watch myself back. I’m like, ‘Oh, this could have looked better, this could have been better.’ But when I watched that match back, that 30 second clip made me laugh out loud. And I was like, ‘Okay, I gotta put this — I gotta cut this 30 seconds out, throw it up on Twitter.’ And I did, and like within hours it was everywhere. It was insane. It was on ESPN, it was on The Soup, it was on all these news sites, it was on Stephen Colbert. It was literally everywhere: Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated. It was insane how viral this video went. And there’s no manual for that. There’s no ‘Oh, what to do when your video goes viral.’ So I was just trying to push it and capitalize on it as much as I can. I thought, ‘You know what? I’m gonna get a good two or three months out of this’ … but it just kept going and going, and no pun intended, growing. And it still is to this day. And every few months, it’ll hit another viral spin where I’ll get tagged in it a bunch of times, and I don’t know who’s posting it that’s new or whatever. And it’ll just go crazy. One of the biggest things I ever got was, everybody was saying, like ‘You, my family knows I’m a wrestling fan, so they sent me this clip.’ So it was like, all these people that were just getting sent this clip.”

On the development of his gimmick around it: “So I’m just trying to capitalize on it, I decided I was gonna make my penis a weapon. And I was gonna base my entire matches around trying to get somebody to grab it. And it’s just funny and it’s silly but it works. And I think the important thing is that as Joey Ryan in the ring, the character wrestling, I don’t treat it like a joke, I don’t treat it like it’s comedy. That is the secret. I’m very serious about you grabbing me there, because I want to hit the move and win the match. It’s my Stone Cold Stunner, my Pedigree or whatever it is. I have to hit my move to win the match, so I need you to do it. And so I’m very serious about it, there’s no tongue in cheek, there’s no ‘Look at this fake thing I’m doing,’ because in the ring, I don’t ever treat it as if it’s not real or fake. And I think people appreciate that like you said, that’s the secret is that you’ve gotta get people to believe in it.”

On his name for the move: “So when I first did it, I got sponsored by YouPorn. Yeah, they called me up and they said, ‘Hey, we wanna sponsor you, we’ll send you swag, blah blah blah. Wear it out.’ And they asked if I would name the move after them. So it was the YouPornPlex for a while. But that sponsorship, the time period ended, so people just call it the d**kflip, or d**k move, I guess.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Talk is Jericho with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.