Zack Ryder has reached 1 million followers on Twitter. WWE.com even posted a story profiling Ryder’s milestone, with quotes and everything! Read some excerpts below:
All kidding aside, though, the million mark is a big one for Ryder, whose roller-coaster career has become something of a metaphor for the little guy in WWE. A former Tag Team Champion alongside Curt Hawkins who found himself in near obscurity only a couple of years later, Ryder took to social media in an all-out Twitter blitz to get the WWE Universe on his side in early 2009. Long story short, it worked. Within 14 months of launching his YouTube show “Z! True Long Island Story,” Ryder won the U.S. Title from Dolph Ziggler, bro’d out with Oscar nominee Hugh Jackman and found himself a key player in a marquee WrestleMania match all while garnering mainstream attention for his mastery of social media. While a series of attacks by Kane cut The Ultimate Broski’s legs out from under him in early 2012, Ryder has never allowed himself to fade away in the eyes of the WWE Universe. He’s as much proof as any that hard work pays off, and Ryder admits he always knew that, despite a crazy year, he would eventually cross the mark he’s been laboring toward these past few months.”
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To top it off, the one-million-follower club reads like a laundry list of current and future WWE Hall of Famers, and despite being the self-dubbed “Internet Champion,” Ryder admitted that finding himself in that company is kind of wild. “The guys who have reached the one-million mark — The Rock, John Cena, Randy Orton — those are the top guys in WWE. And me, Zack Ryder, who am I? I’m barely on Raw, I’m some kid who started a YouTube show. So to be in that group, it’s crazy.”
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Also, Zack Ryder recently recorded his final episode of Z! True Long Island Story, which he decided to cap at 100 episodes. Check out the full episode below:
Said Ryder to WWE.com about ending his popular YouTube show: “It got me to where I wanted to be, but it was time to end it, to kill it off before it faded into obscurity … And I’m glad it ended at 100 episodes. I watched the episode back, I put a lot of my time, my heart and my soul into that episode, into the entire series. And when I watched the final episode, I cried.”
He concluded: “It was the end of ‘Z! True Long Island Story,’ ” I became a seven-figure Broski, and this week on my YouTube channel, I will debut the music video to my song ‘Hoeski,’ … And I really believe that this video is going to change the world.”
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CB’s Slant: Yet they STILL don’t push a guy people are actually clamoring to cheer for, even after all of this. It’s just sad at this point, for both Ryder and for WWE.
