Ryback on Curtis Axel and Cain Velasquez’s WWE Releases, Thinks WWE Has Something Against Axel Over His Dad

Ryback weighed in on the releases of Curtis Axel and Cain Velasquez on his latest Conversations With the Big Guy podcast. Both Axel and Velasquez were late reveals in terms of WWE’s spate of April releases and Ryback, having teamed with Axel during their “Rybaxel” run that didn’t get much TV time, talked about his reaction to the news.

In addition to thinking that both Axel and Velasquez would add value to other promotions, Ryback said that he believes that there was something hanging over Axel in terms of Vince McMahon or Triple H in regard to Axel’s father Curt “Mr. Perfect” Hennig. You can see highlights and the full video below:

On finding out about Axel’s release: “Yeah, I sent him a voice message yesterday and I’m sure [I’ll] hopefully hear back from him soon. I’d like to get him on the show, not even talk — just bulls**t stories, we had a lot of good times. That one I saw that, I was actually recording the show yesterday and I checked my phone after and saw the tweet tagged with stuff with him, and I was like, ‘No, man!’ And then looked and saw he’d been released.”

On his reaction the news: “In one way, I’m very happy for him. Because I feel like he was never going to be allowed to be himself or to do anything significant there. On the other hand, though, I know he has a wife and kids, and I know them. And it’s — when you have a steady paycheck coming in for years, and then that all of a sudden is not going to be there anymore in this times of uncertainty, it makes me a little bit upset that he got released with like, the other guys like Heath [Slater] that I personally am invested in and know. I just think it is horrible timing with everything, but hopefully all this is easing up.

“I think — I truly mean this, like with Heath and him, Joe. If he could be Joe Hennig, I think AEW can get some great, great stuff out of him and I think he could add to that roster, in one way or another.”

On his work with Axel in WWE: “I thought me and him had great chemistry together, and I wish we could have had TV stuff, because it would have been a lot better. It was a lot for [WWE]-dot-com and things, and it was a lot of what was going on with me in that period. And it was what it was.

“But even, you saw the B-Team stuff, like they got that over to some degree. Not saying they’re going to be main event stuff with it, but the crowd, the music was catchy, the people were with it. And you saw like, him and Bo, they’re just victims of, no matter what they do, if they even get — it’s supposed to be a low-midcard act and they get it over you’d see though, they pulled them off TV again. And like, they’d leave them off TV. And they just, they did that all the time. And I don’t understand. They do it to Bo and to him, and it’s just crazy.”

On why Axel never got a push: “I can’t figure it out, but [with] Curtis Axel there’s always been something. And I don’t believe it’s with Curtis; I honestly believe there’s something, and I’ve said it before, with his dad, Mr. Perfect, with either Hunter or Vince and something not sitting well with them. And Curtis is always — and not to say they hate Curtis or anything. But we’ve seen it with Vince where they will just toy with people for their whole life with that over something that had nothing to personally do with him. Because there’s nothing else to me that explains kind of how he’s been used, and undervalued and underpaid for his entire time there.”

On Velasquez’s release: “Yeah, that was one, he’d out of the picture. I think they got what they wanted out of him. I think they were going to be, if they got two of it with him and Brock, that probably would have been there ideal circumstance, or ideal thing that they would have wanted with that. They had Brock avenge the UFC loss with that [at Crown Jewel 2019]. And with his injuries and — he’s one of the greatest MMA heavyweights of all time. I mean, in his peak, in his prime, the guy was just an absolute beast. Still is. It’s just so hard to start something new at this stage of the game. And not to say that he can’t because he already has had some success with it.”
On where Velasquez could find success: “It’s just, that schedule [in WWE] too. You know, maybe a place like AEW would be the more fitting place for him, or in Impact Wrestling. Maybe Impact’s the way to go for a bit, to see if he can stay healthy [and] how his body is. I don’t know, it’s just — wrestling is so physically hard on the body that once your body is already in a state where you’ve had some significant injuries like that? Unless like, dude, with the surgeries, he’s had back surgery … so it’s just — I don’t know. Horrible situation, I think he can add value somewhere though.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Conversations With the Big Guy with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.