Former WWE Employee Says WWE Meetings Are ‘Straight Out Of A Dumb Comedy’

WWE

If you ever thought that WWE was a dumb comedy, it extends beyond their on-screen product according to a former employee.

Dan Ryckert recently departed the company earlier this month and has been vocal about several things in regards to the backstage environment in WWE.

Speaking with MinnMax, Ryckert spoke about a specific corporate meeting that he took part in regarding the New Day podcast.

He said:

“Early on, it was a lot. I was doing some traveling, not a ton, but like wearing suits and stuff, things that I didn’t have to do before. But it’s more like running from meeting to meeting and kinda dealing with more of the corporate crap. These meetings and stuff, they feel like they’re straight out of a dumb comedy or something where like nobody could ever be this way. I remember for instance, so we had this business partner when I first started, before the pandemic. They would fly in these experts, these podcast marketing experts from Beverly Hills. It was always a big deal where it’s like, okay, we’re gonna have a three or four hour meeting with this company. I got pulled into this room and there’s this whole PowerPoint thing and they’re trying to think of ways to do a podcast with the New Day. The New Day, as a wrestling fan and a friend of those guys, the answer is let them talk because they are hilarious. Don’t screw with the rapport, we don’t have to overproduce this thing and put all of these segments [together] and stuff.

Ryckert continued on to detail some of the ideas that the partnering company had, saying:

“Like, there were slides like, I remember a couple of the ideas or one of them. They said ‘Now we here at blank have a mad hookup with the Color Run people and WWE crushes epic podcasts, so why don’t we use our mad hookup and you crushing your epic podcast to make the most epic [podcast].’ I was just like ‘What does that mean?’. They were like ‘We could do a partnership with the Color Run and they could like record a podcast from the Color Run. While they’re in the Color Run, they could be talking with people and talking to each other.’ I’m asking and I’m like ‘Wait, you’re asking us to record a podcast while they’re running in a race with street traffic. Do you want live mics on them, what do you mean here?’. It became very clear that all they cared about was the synergistic business opportunity that they had a mad hookup with the Color Run. But then when that didn’t go anywhere, the next one they had was and also keep in mind here, these are people that don’t know wrestling at all. It became very very clear very very quick. They said ‘Twitch is a live video game streaming platform where people can play games and chat with their friends. Fortnite is one of the biggest games out there, so what if we did something called Ya Boys Are Twitchin?’. This is like the most, yanno, marketing thing ever where it’s like, The New Day, occasionally [Xaiver] Woods would be like it’s ya boys the New Day. Of course they were like ‘Well, we could brand that as like Twitching With Ya Boyz or Ya Boyz Are Twitching’. That was on the slide, Y-A-B-O-Y-Z-A-R-E Twitchin apostrophe. They were like ‘They can chat with their fans while shooting them in Fortnite’. I was just like ‘What do you mean? What is that podcast? What is this product, who is this for?’. Are we just opening up voice chat? What do you think this is, why don’t you just let three hilarious friends talk to each other about the things they like to talk about.”

Dan Ryckert recently admitted how WWE has a culture of fear behind the scenes, which you can read about here.

Quotes via Fightful

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• meetings
• Dumb
• comedy
• wwe

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