Chad Lail, formerly known as Jaxson Ryker, has recently discussed the aftermath of his tweet in support of then-President Donald Trump during the George Floyd protests. On the “Wrestling for the Faith” podcast, he opened up about the backlash he received from his former WWE colleagues and how he attempted to make amends.
Ryker revealed that he reached out to Kevin Owens after the tweet gained traction and the comments started pouring in. He asked Weston Blake to be the middleman to get in contact with Owens and they had a conversation where they agreed to disagree. Despite their differences, Ryker appreciated Owens’ willingness to have a dialogue with him.
He also spoke about his conversation with Mustafa Ali, who apologized for going public with his reaction to the tweet when Ryker returned to TV in late 2020. Additionally, Ryker had a conversation with Xavier Woods, a longtime friend from the early 2000s. While one person expressed disagreement with the timing of the tweet, Ryker appreciated that they kept their opinion private.
Ryker believes that the situation would have blown over if the wrestlers hadn’t added to the controversy. His latest remarks shed more light on the fallout from his tweet and how he attempted to resolve the situation with his former colleagues.
Well, I’ll go ahead and say it because I don’t really care but, when it all happened (fallout from Ryker’s pro-Donald Trump tweet), one of the guys who came out and just kind of blasted was Kevin Owens and and I instantly knew that (Westin) Blake and Kevin were close, they had talked and stuff like that. I texted Blake, I said, ‘Hey dude, do me a favor, ask Kevin if I can have his number.’ So, lo and behold, Kevin said, ‘Yeah, sure’ so Kevin and I actually talked one night right after this happened for probably 30 minutes. Basically agreed to disagree. But Kevin even came out and said, ‘Dude, I’ve said crazy stuff in my career.’ So, he was one of ‘em and we had already talked. But the only other one that really came up and talked to me was (Mustafa) Ali because Ali I think had said something about the tweet when it had all happened and he had come up to me that night at the arena and respectfully man, ‘Hey dude, we all got our own opinions and I just wanna apologize that I had said anything on Twitter about it. I should have just come to you man-to-man.’ I was like, ‘Dude, that’s completely okay.’ I was like, ‘I don’t hold beef or grudges’ and you know, another one was — he and i had talked on the phone was Xavier Woods because we’ve known each other since, gosh, 2006 and just, you know, put it under the table and kind of ironed things out but any of the other ones who were tough guys, quote-unquote, with my fingers here on Twitter, they didn’t have anything to say. It was like, ‘Hey man! Good to see you’ and just, listen, you know, whatever. The fake wrestling business, we know how it is. Hey, come here, let me give you a hug. I’m gonna stick this knife in your back. But you know, but those guys did and it’s not like Kevin and I were buddies and went out to dinner together. But, you know, it was a conversation we had and at least he was willing to talk to me.
There was one person in particular, the night the tweet went out, instead of getting on Twitter like all the other trolls, this person actually texted me, said, ‘Hey, I don’t understand why you would post that. But I think this is probably a bad time to do so’ and I respectfully said, ‘Man, I disagree. I posted stuff like this before. I didn’t say anything wrong.’ So that person, I appreciate just reaching out to me that night instead of just getting on Twitter and going, oh! Blah, blah, blah. Let’s throw fuel on the fire so people continue to threaten your family and threaten your career. That’s the thing that really got me was it’d probably fizzle out if it wasn’t for the superstars who I worked with adding fuel to the fire on Twitter because they wanted people to go, oh, we praise you because you don’t agree with Gunner. But, anyway…
There was another conversation that Ryker had with Mustafa Ali and it had to do with the RETRIBUTION group. Before Ryker began working on-screen with Elias, there were ideas thrown around for him to join RETRIBUTION and Ali spoke to him about it.
Ultimately, he’s glad that did not happen as he feels it would not have been a good fit.
Dude, funny because I guess it was December (2020). I’m sitting at home on a Saturday night, it’s 11 PM and I’m just chilling on the couch and I get a text from travel, WWE Travel, 11 o’clock at night, Saturday night. ‘Hey, they’re flying you into Raw for Monday. Your flight will be on Sunday’ so the next day at like, whatever, 2 or 3 and I’m like, ‘Okay. What am I doing? I need to know what to bring and all this stuff.’ So I have a 12 hour window, fly into Raw. We were in Orlando I believe, yeah, Orlando. Get there and for a couple weeks, there was ideas bouncing back and forth of putting me with the — oh man, what was that team’s name? That came out there with (Mustafa) Ali, remember those guys? You remember the name of that group?… Yeah, RETRIBUTION, because Ali had come up to me there at TV that first week I got back and said, ‘Hey, I think the plans are bring you in RETRIBUTION and kind of do some stuff with us’ and I’m like, ‘Alright, well, whatever man. Whatever gets me back in the mix.’ So the whole Elias thing didn’t come into play because I sat at TV. Dude, I came in for a month maybe? I’m trying to remember when Elias and I debuted together. I wanna say January… So I did sit for like two or three weeks because it was like the end of November, beginning of December when I flew back into Raw. So it was two or three weeks when I was just in limbo, sitting in the locker room going, ‘What’s going on?’ Really no word, the RETRIBUTION thing and then I came in one week and it was like, ‘Okay, what we’re gonna do is put you with Elias’ and then Elias and I started connecting and talking and I just was kind of his little security guy because people kept (interrupting) his music and all of that stuff so, their idea was to introduce me back into that mix. So it’s funny. I’m glad the RETRIBUTION thing didn’t happen because I mean, some of those guys went on to do some different stuff but it was just kind of, man, it kind of fizzled out after a while, you know? And I was like, that would have been a bad position for me so once again, the Lord’s hand was working in many different ways on that.
