On Excuse Me: The Vickie Guerrero Show, Ryback, a one-time Intercontinental Champion who left WWE in 2016, recently spoke about the supposed origin of Mark Henry’s Silverback gimmick, which the wrestler eventually rejected.
“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,” Ryback said.
“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,” he added.
Last year, Henry spoke about rejecting the gimmick, which WWE proposed in 2007, due to its racist undertones. “The whole Silverback thing. I refused to continue to do that because I just thought it was kind of demeaning and being an African-American male and the history of people calling black people primates and monkeys and stuff, I said ‘I’m not going to be a part of that,’ and I said ‘I don’t like it and I want it to change.” he said.
On May 2, 2016, it was reported that WWE had sent Ryback home due to a contract dispute. He ended up not participating in a battle royal match he was promoted for. The following day, Ryback stated that he had decided to go home due to a lack of equal pay for talent and creative frustration. The 39-year old wrestler, who has since performed on the indie circuit, founded Feed Me More Nutrition, a dietary supplement company in 2016.
Meanwhile, Henry, who was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame Class of 2018, took on a backstage mentoring role at the promotion in early 2019, advising talent work on their off-air attitude. On the January 4, 2021 episode of Raw, on its Raw Legends Night special, Henry appeared riding on a scooter and was subsequently humiliated by Randy Orton.