Ryback made a recent appearance on Vickie Guerrero’s Excuse Me podcast to discuss a wide range of topics.
During it, he shared how he came up with his name and the creation of “Feed Me More.” Here is what he had to say:
“Feed Me More” was created from when I worked at Smokey Bones in Louisville, KY and I was fired from WWE. True Story. I got fired. Mark Henry actually took my Silverback nickname. WWE gave it to him on TV and I was the Silverback Ryan Reeves, so I had to come up with a new wrestling name. I was watching Terminator 2. Quite a bit of alcohol had been consumed and I was really depressed. I had broken up with a girl that I was deeply in love with. It was just a horrible thing. That night, Ryan and Silverback, I came up with Ryback while watching Terminator 2. That was a pivotal point in my life and why Ryback was so important to me. That was when my mindset changed forever. I started setting goals and have direction in my life. That was the birth of Ryback. That’s why that meant a lot to me. The ‘Feed Me More’ came right after it. The cooks at Smokey Bones used to always say that I would always eat all the food. They would hide food for me. My manager called me ‘The Big Guy.’ I told him, ‘That’s my nickname. I’m going to trademark that and use it on TV.’ We all joked about it and the cooks would always say, ‘Feed me more.’ Feed me more was the code word and they would point where they would hide food in little to go boxes for me. They would mess up orders on purpose because they knew I was trying to keep my size and financially, working in a restaurant 40-50 hours a week. The Feed Me More, it was from a book on feeding your soul. That, to me, was adopting the hungry mindset that connected to Ryback. That’s why that means a lot to me and why it wasn’t created in WWE and why it was the beginning of a new chapter in my life at that point that has allowed me all my success.”
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