411’s WWE Table for 3: Gone Viral Report (Matt Hardy, Xavier Woods, Zack Ryder)

411’s WWE Table for 3: Gone Viral Report

-Original Air Date: August 14, 2018

-Run Time: 24:51

-Table for 3 is back again and this time we get to watch as Xavier Woods, Matt Hardy, and Zack Ryder discuss the importance of social media in today’s wrestling world. This is actually an interesting concept and I iam ntrigued to hear what these three have to say. As a cheap plug you can follow me on twitter (@RobertLeightyJr).

-Naturally all three have their phones out as we start and they take pictures of their meals to post on twitter or instagram to give their fans a spoiler for this episode. Woods talks about how different things are today as you go to a party and most of the time everyone is staring at their phones. Ryder says he sees both sides as he does enjoy being at a place like Disney World and will take a few pictures, but he knows the balance to enjoy the moment.

-Matt talks about how he has found a nice balance and he is ok with talking to fans. He knows his wife will go off and say anything she has on her mind. He says twitter can be cathartic but says he is a terrible twitter friend. Ryder asks if Matt checks out his gym selfies, and Matt says no. Woods says he rarely checks out his friends stuff, but he does catch Ryder’s selfies because Breeze shares them.

-Woods wants to ask Matt about his broken universe, but asks if he is allowed to even say “Broken,” and Matt tells him it is fine as he owns everything about that world now. Woods wants to know how twitter and YouTube helped with that universe. Matt talks about working with Jeremy Borash and how he had his wife help him supplement the videos that showed on TV with twitter and YouTube videos. They show one of the tweets and it reads #ImpactOnPop which is still something I am not used to seeing on WWE TV no matter how much they use footage or reference TNA/Impact Wrestling. Matt says he was in control of everything and that everything had good continuity. Woods said he saw it for the first time when Jericho shared it with him and he marked out because he loves over the top stuff like that (he references the stuff from Papa Shango as a kid). He asks Matt if he thinks it would have hit as hard without social media and Matt says no chance. He had the idea of doing things so that they could be GIFs or Memes. Matt brings up how Edge and Christian have their Network Show and it helps fill the void of being creative when you can no longer be in the ring.

-They ask Ryder why he jumped on the YouTube train. He says he was doing nothing on TV and was worried he was going to get fired so he started using his flip phone and learned to edit the videos. Matt loved the video of Ryder climbing over a fence and telling everyone “he was trying to get over.” Awesome! Ryder wanted to legit use the Internet Title on TV, but they would not let him. They did let it appear in the video game and on a shirt. He picked up on that if he involved the fans it would get him over and there would be more signs and Ryder fans at the shows.

-Woods says that as you grow your show you start to use the audience for content as well. He puts Ryder over for being one of the first to use social media and Ryder mentions that Morrison and Miz had “The Dirt Sheet” which predated his stuff, but his stuck a chord and got people to chant “We want Ryder.” Of course the fans apparently didn’t know what they wanted as the WWE never truly got behind him and told the audience thatthey  didn’t know what they wanted. Ryder brings up using his dad and Matt gets in a nice jab about shilling your family out like that. Ha!

-Matt says that his son was actually part of the TNA roster and Woods says he was blown away when he realized that the story was building towards Matt’s son having a match.

-Ryder brings up Matt Hardy Version 1.0 and how they would post “Matt Facts” and they show us his sweet entrance theme/video. Matt says the idea was the WWE’s but he came up with 3-4 facts for each show.

-Woods asks Ryder when did the company pick up on what he was doing with his videos. He says that at first nobody cared or paid attention. Eventually they wanted the videos on WWE.com and he told them no as he wanted to keep it on YouTube. As luck would have it, the WWE got their own YouTube channel and he said he would do them there, but he wanted full control. It then became a job to him as he never wanted to have a deadline and then when they pushed him he couldn’t make jokes about not being on TV anymore. He talks about the one of the episodes and how it was full of weird videos and John Cena puking and the WWE wouldn’t are it. He decided to film himself talking about how the show he wanted to do wasn’t going to be shown thanks to the WWE so he signed off and let 2 minutes of video of the set be filmed. The WWE wasn’t happy with that video either obviously so the show skipped a week. Woods and Hardy laugh and appreciate the balls it took for Ryder to do something like that.

-Ryder asks Woods about his show and how he thought a show about video games was out there. Woods thanks Ryder for bearing the cross with his show to pave the way for his. He says the show started 3 years ago with an idea for a Network show where he would travel town to town to arcade bars. That show wasn’t green lit and eventually they gave him a chance to do his show, but they wanted everyone to stay in character and follow storylines, but he wouldn’t agree to that. He wanted the show to be under the WWE umbrella, but be a show without a ton of producers. He didn’t want better lighting and better cameras and sets. He takes care of everything and he keeps the people who appear on the show limited to those that have been there since the start. He just wants it left alone where he can do his own thing. He knows people can enjoy both shows and accept that Kofi is one character in the WWE with rivalries, but is another person on Up, Up, Down, Down and have other rivalries in the gaming world.

-They get into the discussion about getting into arguments on twitter and they all start laughing. Ryder says he doesn’t deal with getting into fights with fans. He would get into trash talk fights with collectors of wrestling figures. Matt talks about getting into twitter fights when he was a heel in TNA and they show a tweet where he called a fan a “dumbass” and “internet gnat.” Tremendous! When he became a face he stopped messing with them.

-His favorite thing is seeing people insult him who have burner accounts. Woods likes to mute people so they know they aren’t blocked. He talks about blocking a guy who spent years trying to get unblocked because he was upset he couldn’t see what Woods was tweeting. Woods met the guy at a signing and the guy pleaded to be unblocked and that they were being cordial now. Woods told him it was fine they could talk like this but clearly he said something offensive to him and for that he was blocked. They love having fans ask them to ask another wrestler to unblock them. Ryder says he immediately blocks that fan for even asking something like that.

-Ryder remembers being told about twitter from The Miz and he felt it was the dumbest thing. To him it was just constantly updating your status and yet he couldn’t stay off of it. They all agree that the best and worst thing about social media is it gives everyone a voice.

-Some small talk to close as Ryder jokes this will get his face on TV again. Nice!

-This was fun and I enjoyed seeing them tackle this subject. I was hoping to get some more stories about twitter trolls, but sadly they didn’t go too deep on that subject. Woods kind of took the lead in this discussion and did a great job with it. It was nice seeing Ryder pop up somewhere and I appreciate the WWE threw him a bone since he was one of the first to use social media to his benefit. All three men had a lot to add here and I wish they had shown more as I suspect they each have some great stories about what they have had to deal with on social media. Good stuff here as we got a rather enjoyable episode. Go follow all three of these guys on twitter.

-Thanks for reading!