Jaxson Ryker reportedly still has backstage heat on him for his comments in support of President Donald Trump made earlier this year, and some of the other social media comments he made, according to Fightful Select.
As noted earlier, tonight’s SmackDown on FOX saw Ryker’s former Forgotten Sons partners Wesley Blake and Steve Cutler return to TV as muscle for King Baron Corbin. You can click here for our original report on their returns, along with photos and videos.
It was noted that Ryker remains at home in North Carolina and has not been brought to WWE TV tapings in months. At one point Ryker wasn’t even featured on internal WWE roster shots. Ryker deleted his social media accounts around a month ago, and when Fightful asked why, they were simply told WWE had no plans for him. Around that time it was revealed that WWE had started working on creative plans for Blake and Cutler, which led to tonight’s return.
The report also reiterated that Blake and Cutler never had any internal heat over Ryker’s comments. As noted, both Blake and Cutler quickly distanced themselves from Ryker when the fallout from his comments came down. Many wrestlers and employees within WWE felt bad that Blake and Cutler were caught up in the Ryker situation.
A WWE source noted that Ryker “wasn’t worth the risk of bad publicity of being on TV” right now, and also mentioned that main roster officials weren’t that high on him when he was called up from WWE NXT anyway. Ryker never did wrestle a match on SmackDown. We noted before that WWE had plans for The Forgotten Sons to win the SmackDown Tag Team Titles from then-champions The New Day, but the plan was nixed when the Ryker situation happened.
Stay tuned for updates.
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