WWE and Peacock aired a WrestleMania 38 commercial during the Super Bowl, and used the word ‘dynamite’ in the ad, as seen below.
One former WWE star that AEW will likely never sign based on their history is Jaxson Ryker. WWE star Jaxson Ryker was previously involved in a controversy after he sent out a tweet in 2020. Back in 2018, Ryker began teaming with Steve Cutler and Wesley Blake as The Forgotten Sons. The trio made their NXT TV debut at the end of August and was a part of NXT’s Tag Team Division until their main roster debut in April of 2020. However, the group was taken off of television after a controversial tweet from Ryker.
In the Tweet, he expressed his support for then US President Donald Trump. Ryker was subsequently moved to Raw and paired with Elias while Blake and Cutler were paired with King Corbin. Jaxson and Elias’ partnership ended this past May, leading to a feud that culminated in a Symphony of Destruction match two months later.
Jaxson Ryker opens up on his actions
During the most recent episode of the Wrestling for the Faith podcast, Ryker spoke at length about his 2020 tweet and admitted that he still believes he said nothing wrong.
“Well, yeah, June 1st, 2020, sent at 7:52 p.m. I had just moved into my new house here in Mooresville, North Carolina. You know we’ve all got our views on who’s — anytime there’s a President, there’s a leader, that’s what makes America great. That’s why I served four years in the Marine Corps so I could Tweet about my approval for a certain President. It wasn’t one of those where I was trying to bash anybody else. I was simply putting out my support for a President that I thought was doing a good job for this country. Gas prices were down, unemployment was down, jobs were up. There was so much going on. The economy was flourishing. You can do the studies and look at them. That was just my Tweet to show my support, which the funny thing is before that, Lord I mean I was looking through some history of things, I would Tweet or Instagram certain things about Donald Trump but for some reason that day, and I believe you touched on it before we started, some things that were going on in America at the time, I tweeted my support for him before. To me, there was nothing wrong with that tweet. There were no racial undertones. There were no jabs. Nothing but me saying ‘God Bless America,’ and thankful for the President of the United States that we had at the time. As I said, I served four years in the Marine Corps from ’02-’06, does that give me the right to be an idiot on social media and go out and say stupid stuff? Not. But does it give me the right to support a President that I voted for? I do believe it was. Look, we’ve never talked about it. First time right here for people getting a chance to hear about it. I am excited to kind of let it out. But I could see if there was something wrong with that Tweet, but in my eyes, I said nothing wrong, so that’s where I stand on it,” he said.
Once the tweet was sent, Ryker received several threats and faced a situation which he called the most extreme thing he has ever been through:
“I’m sitting on my couch and within a matter of 15 minutes, my phone starts to just blow up. I start to get random phone calls from random numbers and I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’ My wife goes, ‘What’s going on with your phone?’ I mean, it was like the end of the world had happened,” Ryker stated. “Within a matter of an hour or so, I’m getting death threats, I’m getting cell phone calls. If I could number the number of voicemails that came over my phone from the time it happened for at least a week, well over 100 voicemails, people threatening my family. My address within a matter of an hour was tweeted out. A new address. People were saying they were going to come to burn down my house. People said they were going to come to murder, my family. Dude, it was the most extreme thing I’ve ever been through to the point where the old Chad back in his 20s wanted to come out.”
Last November, Ryker was released by WWE after three and a half years with the company.
