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| Ryder jobbing in his hometown Photo Credit: WWE.com |
Zack Ryder last night wrestled in front of his hometown Long Island crowd against Ezekiel Jackson. In the past, like in the regional days, a guy would be treated to a special win or something of that nature. Hell, even in TNA, that kind of special thing happens for hometown guys, as Jay Lethal dropped the X Division Championship to Amazing Red in Red's hometown of New York and then won it back in his own hometown of Rahway, NJ. Naturally, Ryder got squashed in under two minutes. What?
This isn't the first time that someone's been humiliated in their hometown or on their birthday. The WWE has a nasty reputation for doing the exact opposite of doing a guy a favor in front of a hometown crowd, whether it's a guy like Ryder last night or even Jim Ross getting humiliated in Oklahoma. Hell, they even went to great lengths to shit on an entire country at a show in Calgary last year. Why have they gone on this path in the last five or so years? What do they have to gain by it?
It's not like Ryder needed his ego cut down. The guy has been comedy and squash fodder on RAW. A nice, hometown win might have been a nice treat for a guy who goes out there, gets humiliated or loses whenever he's on the big stage and does it like a trooper. He deserves a reward in front of his home crowd every once in awhile, or at the very least, he deserves not to get squashed like a bug.
It reminds me of that episode of The Simpsons where Homer recounts the story of how Maggie was born and how he had to go crawling back to the Power Plant after quitting. They put a placard over his workstation saying "You're here for life!" as a means of breaking him and keeping him from ever quitting again. Being jobbed out horriffically seems akin to that placard, especially since the options after leaving WWE would be either to go to TNA, a company with a quarter of the exposure and much less relevance that the WWE has or going back to the indies, where the dropoff in money and exposure is steeper than going to Orlando.
I know it's kind of stupid to complain about getting "downtrodden" like that in a company that pays these wrestlers the most money they could be making in that particular industry, but it still seems tacky and bushleague to humiliate them in front of their hometown crowds.
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