Former WWE star Chad Lail (Jaxson Ryker) spoke out for the first time on the “Wrestling For The Faith” podcast to talk about the statements he made that got him in hot water with co-workers and fans. Following comments about Black Lives Matter and Donald Trump, he was pulled from WWE television.
On the backlash he got shortly after his tweet about Trump, Lail said: “I’m sitting on my couch and within a matter of — I’m gonna say 15 minutes, my phone starts to just blow up. I start to get random phone calls from random numbers. I’m like, what’s going on? And my wife goes ‘what, what’s going on with your phone?’ I mean, literally, it’s like the end of the world had happened. Within a matter of an hour or so I’m getting death threats. I’m getting cell phone calls. If I can number the amount of voicemails that came over my phone from that time it happened for at least a good week. Well over 100 voicemails [and] people threatening my family, my address within a matter of an hour or so was tweeted out. My new address. People were saying they were gonna come burn down my house. People said they were gonna come murder my family. Dude, it was the most extreme thing I’ve ever been through to the point of the old Chad back in his 20s wanting to come out, you know what I mean?”
Lail continued, “I’m not going to ask for anybody to defend me. What I would say was 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 gonna name any names, don’t think it’s important. But there was tweets that went out from co-workers that fueled the fire. I was like, ‘What in the world?’ Like the majority of you guys know who I am as a person and for you to you to do this to make this 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. I mean, my address was tweeted out [and] people threatening my family. It was ridiculous. I mean, people calling my phone like I said, random numbers. So of course, you know, it’s 2022 and now it’s very easy to access all this stuff and I was just blown away. Like I was sitting here on my couch and my wife once she found out the tweet, even she was like, ‘there was nothing wrong with that tweet, like what is going on?'”
Lail added, “Here I am on WWE SmackDown, we had just got caught up with the Forgotten Sons, hence the ‘forgotten no more’ [hashtag]. Instantly, there was like a stop right on the storyline that we were with New Day. You know, there was a complete halt on everything for basically our career there for the foreseeable future. It was one of those things where and I’ll talk about it — in my 20s I’d have been ready to — and I was mad dude. I you know, I’m a gun owner. I, you know, I had I had them loaded and ready, didn’t sleep much that night. You know, didn’t sleep much for a few days, because I was like, ‘dude, is somebody really gonna come to my house, somebody’s gonna come knock on my door.’ I got a cousin that lives up the street that you know, heard about it instantly. He would walk by my house throughout the night. Little did I know just to keep an eye on things. Thank God nobody has come to my house or anything and nothing stupid coming in my mailbox but it just blew me away. I can see if I got on social media and drop the N bomb or started all this racial stuff. But dude, it was basically a tweet saying — and I tweeted it before, my support for a president and it was like one of those times where the enemy, the devil used that bro. He used that to try and sidetrack me to try and knock me off course.”
Lail continued talked about certain friends in WWE who he feels turned their back on him: “there was certain, quote unquote friends who would text me or call me and one of them who I respect and still do [and] worked with him many times, he told me he was disappointed and I called him and I said, ‘why are you disappointed in me?’ I said, ‘this is my views, not like I said anything wrong.’ And he was just like, ‘I just expected more from you.’ And I’m like, ‘because I don’t support who you support. You know, that’s what you’re talking about here, dude.’ It’s like, these cancel culture, folks, and you see it in Hollywood all the time. You know, certain actors getting canceled because somebody they support or things they stand for, whether it be anti-abortion or whatever, but the same ones who were screaming, you know, my body my choice, like, oh, I can go murder a baby. They’re the same ones over here going, ‘Oh, you need to get this vaccine or you need to do this.’ But so what are we doing here? We’re just dividing the country, man and we’ve seen that over the past few years.”
“And 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 and now I’ll try to tread lightly when I say this. The Christians, the American Christian started looking to him (Trump) as their savior. So I heard a pastor say this one time we’ve taken the cross and replaced it with the American flag or a Trump flag. So he became people’s savior and you see it now when you’re riding down the street people have a ‘F Biden’ flag flying at their house and I’m like ‘what are we doing right now, man?’ Like, you know, can we just drop it? I mean, so the thing is, I never made Donald Trump my savior, Jesus Christ as my Savior, you know, I mean, so in the end when Biden got elected, do I agree? Absolutely not. But you know what, still pray for the man, he’s not my savior. The Lord has a purpose and a reason for all this stuff, dude. But before I get off track, we’ll get back to the tweet. I mean, that’s the thing, I didn’t make [Trump] my Savior. I think the tweet just got knocked way out of proportion. ”
More from the interview:
- Jaxson Ryker (Chad Lail) says he did nothing wrong when he expressed support for Donald Trump
- Jaxson Ryker explains “Soul Man” post from 2017, having his career canceled because of past tweets
- Jaxson Ryker says he is not a racist: Black Lives Matter is ‘basically a terrorist group. It’s garbage to me’
- Jaxson Ryker on WWE management reaction to his tweets, WWE talent wearing BLM logo on their gear
Click below if you want to hear the entire interview.
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Wrestling For The Faith with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription
