Ryback was on the periphery of being a huge star for WWE, however things didn’t turn out great for the “Big Guy”. He is someone who was often compared to the likes of Brock Lesnar and Goldberg. He, like many others, wanted to mix it up with Brock Lesnar for what he likely viewed as a major dream match. On paper, this seemed like the perfect matchup for someone like Vince McMahon, who is a fan of big powerhouses going at it. In fact, Ryback requested numerous times to work with Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania, though it must be stated that the ideas and pitches were a little far-fetched, especially when considering his place on the card at certain times of pitching to Vince McMahon.

According to Ryback on Busted Open Radio (h/t Fightful), he attempted multiple times at getting a match with Lesnar. “My idea was, and I went to Vince, I've been asking for Brock Lesnar for WrestleMania for the last three years. But I told Vince, 'you have to build me up properly.' And I go, 'this pay-per-view, it will break all-time records if you build this match up properly.' And I asked him, I go, 'you need to let me go away for six months' and I go, 'I live in Las Vegas. MMA is hugely, insanely popular. It's pretty much the breeding ground here in Las Vegas of MMA.' I said, 'let me go join a fight camp, full-time, for six months. We will make it look like I'm about to go out and do a real fight. I come back to WWE though, challenge Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania.”

Imagining Ryback going through an MMA camp to build him up for a fake MMA fight, only to come back for WrestleMania would have been a huge risk, as it would all depend on people caring for whatever Ryback was set to do. If Ryback had been built well consistently from the start, then this could have worked, but unfortunately for Ryback, his status in WWE was never truly at a level where he could have faced Brock Lesnar, and his continual requests weren’t realistic.