Jaxson Ryker (Chad Lail) has opened up about a controversial tweet he sent in 2020.
In February of 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 were a staple of NXT's Tag Team Division until their main roster debut in April of 2020.
The group was taken off of television after a controversial tweet from Ryker in which he showed 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.
On Thursday, November 18, 2021, Ryker was released by WWE after three and a half years with the company.
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 own 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 it. That was basically just my Tweet to show my support, which the funny thing is prior to 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 was no racial undertones. There was no jabs. Nothing but me saying 'God Bless America,' and thankful for the President of the United States that we had at the time. Like 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? Absolutely 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's phone blew up with threats, 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, literally, 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 amount 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 burn down my house. People said they were going to come 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."
What bothered Ryker the most about his coworkers' reaction to the tweet was that they already knew who he was as a person.
"Not only that, and we'll touch on this too, I'm not going to ask for anybody to defend me, what I would say is folks that I worked with that I thought were my friends or thought were my companions were quick to turncoat. There were some tweets that went out from coworkers, not going to name any names, don't think it's important but there were tweets that went out from coworkers that fueled the fire. I was like, 'What in the world?' The majority of you guys know who I am as a person and for you to do this to make it look like this tweet was some kind of racial-hate-speech-bigot, whatever you want to call it, that's really what started to bother me.
"So yeah man, my address tweeted out, people started threatening my family. It was ridiculous. I mean, people were calling my phone, random numbers. So of course it's 2022 now, it's very easy to access all this stuff and I was just blown away. I was sitting there on my couch and my wife when she found out the tweet even she was like, 'There was nothing wrong with that tweet. What is going on?' Here I am on WWE SmackDown, we had just got called up with the Forgotten Sons, hence the forgotten no more or whatever line at the end. Dude, instantly, there was like a stop right on the storyline that we were on with New Day. There was a complete halt on everything on our career there for basically the foreseeable future. I'll talk about it, and it was one of those things where in my 20s I would have been ready to -- and I was mad. I'm a gun owner and, you know, I had them loaded and ready. Didn't sleep much that night. Didn't sleep much for a few days because I was like, 'Is somebody really going to come to my house? Is somebody going to come know on my door?' I got a cousin that lives up the street that heard about it and instantly, he would walk by my house throughout the night, little did I know, just to keep an eye on things. Thank God no one ever came to my house or anything and nothing stupid came in my mailbox. I can see if I had gone on social media and dropped the N-bomb or started all this racial stuff, but it was basically a tweet, and I'd tweeted it before my support for the President and it was just one of those times where the enemy, the devil used that to try and sidetrack me and knock me off course," he said.
Continuing on, Ryker believes that he was definitely a victim of cancel culture.
"Definitely canceled, for sure. Then there were quote-unquote friends who would text me or call me and one of them who I respect, and still do, worked with him many times, told me he was disappointed with me. I called him and I said, 'Why are you disappointed in me? These are my views. It's not like I said anything wrong. And he was just like, 'I just expected more from you.' I'm like, 'Because I don't support who you support?' That's what we're talking about here. These cancel culture folks, and you see it in Hollywood all the time, certain actors getting canceled because of somebody they support or things they stand for, whether it be anti-abortion or whatever, but the same ones who are screaming 'My body, my choice,' like, 'Oh, I can go murder a baby,' they're the same ones that are here going 'You need to get this vaccine' or 'You need to do this.' But what are we doing here? We're just dividing the country and we seen that over the past few years. I'll say this, and I've always said this, the problem that I see with the Trump thing is what happened was not everybody, all I try and tread lightly when I say this, but the American Christians started looking to him as their savior. So I heard a pastor say this one time, 'We've taken the cross and we've replaced it with the American flag or a Trump flag,' so he became people's savior. You see it now when you're riding down the street and people have a 'F-Biden' flag flying at their house. You're like, 'What are we doing right now?' Can we just drop it? I never made Donald Trump my savior. Jesus Christ is my savior. So in the end when Biden got elected, do I agree? Absolutely not, but you know what, I still pray for the man. He's not my savior. The Lord has a purpose for all this stuff, but before I get off track we'll get back to the tweet. That's the thing, I didn't make him my savior. I think the tweet just got knocked way out of proportion. Then, and we'll dive into this, they started pulling up stuff that happened not only a year prior to that, but bro, 5-6 years prior to that stuff that I had Facebooked and Tweeted," he said.
Finally, he shared what WWE Talent Relation told him to do after sending the tweet and how he felt it was hypocritical given that other talents were allowed to discuss and promote social issues they felt passionately about.
"They told me to lay low. Head of Talent Relations at the time, I would email him weekly, 'What's going on?' He would say to just lay low and don't tweet. They never, luckily, asked me to take the tweet down or issue an apology because I would have politely said 'no.' I really do stand firm on that. But I was just told to lay low, don't tweet anything. That's the thing that was a little weird because there was certain talent who can -- I'll just say it, who could go out on live TV and have the BLM logo on their trunks or certain talent who could tweet about pro-abortion views and all this stuff and I was just like, 'What?' So this is really where why stick with WWE, it's like the Spirit started working in me going, 'Maybe this isn't for you. This company isn't for you, so we're going to bide our time here.' That's when I really started praying, 'Lord, when it's time for the door to close, let that thing shut.' When it did back in November I was at peace about it," Ryker concluded.
Ryker's last match came on November 1 in a losing effort against Cedric Alexander on WWE Main Event.
If you use the quotes above, please credit the original source with a h/t and link back to Fightful for the transcription.