10 Wrestlers Who Faced Backlash Due To Their Social Media Posts

Thanks to the rise in popularity of the Internet over the last few decades, fans have nearly unfettered access to all things pro wrestling, including the history, backstage gossip, and the matches themselves. They also have more access to their favorire stars, many of whom run social media accounts to share their thoughts and interact with fans. While this has resulted in some delightful moments like The Iron Sheik’s entire Twitter account, it has also resulted in controversy.

In recent years, fans have seen a number of wrestlers receive backlash due to social media posts — not just from fans, but the promotions like WWE that employ them. Let’s take a look at 10 times that wrestlers got blowback from a social media post.

10 Braun Strowman

When he broke away from The Wyatt Family in _2015_, Braun Strowman proved to be a surprisingly popular singles star, but found himself drawing the ire of fans and wrestlers alike with a Tweet. Following his match against fellow big man Omos at Crown Jewel 2022, Strowman gloated about how hoss matches are superior to the “floppy floppers” indie wrestling style. The tweet elicited responses from high flyers like Will Ospreay — a wrestler who will come up several times on this list — and even Strowman’s WWE coworker Ricochet, who ended up forming a tag team with Strowman to capitalize on the moment.

9 Lio Rush

Speaking of high flyers, Lio Rush’s time in WWE was a strange one with backstage controversies galore and a random stint as Bobby Lashley’s manager. While off of that was a source of debate, everyone seemed to agree about Rush’s surprisingly insensitive Tweet about Emma in the wake of her release from WWE. After Emma fell victim to the wave of releases in 2017, “The Man of the Hour” tweeted a joke about Emma truly not being ready for her recent opponent, Asuka, and many felt his joke was uncalled for.

8 Seth Rollins

Not even a popular star like Seth Rollins is immune to social media controversy. Strangely, however, what kicked off the online kerfuffle was a positive comment — in mid-2019, Rollins big-upped WWE by simply Tweeting “Best pro wrestling on the planet.”

While some fans disagreed with the assertion based on the product at the time, it also resulted in an online feud between Rollins and New Japan Pro-Wrestling’s Will Ospreay as the two exchanged barbs over social media.

7 Jay Briscoe

The late Jay Briscoe was one of ROH’s most popular and tentured stars, going from a beloved tag team specialist to a beloved singles star. But in 2013 he took it upon himself to Tweet some surprisingly hostile homophobic remarks, which he quickly walked back as being written “in character” as opposed to being his actual feelings. Briscoe later showed remorse for his statement on multiple occasions, but his actions nevertheless followed him for the rest of his career, as reportedly WarnerMedia refused to allow Jay and his brother Mark to appear on AEW television.

6 Bronson Matthews

Fans may not know the name Bronson Matthews, but they may know his controversial Tweet. One of the two winners of Tough Enough in 2015, Matthews — a.k.a. Josh Breidl, seen on Breaking Ground trying to develop a Yeti gimmick — was live-tweeting an episode of Raw when he referred to the newly formed Social Outcasts faction as “#SocialJobbers.” Many of WWE’s stars took exception to a newcomer to the wrestling world — one who won a contest, no less — using insider knowledge to apparently slam his coworkers, and Matthews was eventually released from the company in 2017.

5 Zahra Schreiber

Another name that wrestling fans might not know is that of Zahra Schreiber, whose main claim to famewould be as the WWE developmental talent who Seth Rollins was reportedly cheating on his fiance with. However, shortly after the affair was made public, fans found posts of hers on Instagram that were explicitly pro-Nazi, including an image of a My Little Pony character made up to look like Adolf Hitler. Needless to say, Schreiber was quickly booted from WWE.

4 Ryback

These days, former WWE star Ryback is best known for his Twitter antics, but once upon a time he was a popular rising star whose post-Goldberg dominance and “Feed me more” catchphrase made him a pseudo-ironic favorite. Eventually, however, he began getting vocal on social media.

Soon enough, Ryback began to express his actual problems with WWE, which led to actual consequences including being sent home from a show as well as his release in 2016

3 Cameron

Ryback wasn’t the only WWE star who got in trouble when Ryback Tweeted. After airing his grievances on Twitter, former Funkadactyl Cameron — not known under her real name of Ariane Andrew — stepped up to side with her co-worker, first simply said “agreed” and went on to clarify with a much longer statement. It wasn’t long before Cameron was released from the company as well, which she herself attributed to her Tweets, although she was never told why WWE was firing her.

2 Will Ospreay

A wrestler who often sticks his foot in his mouth online, the aforementioned Will Ospreay himself experienced backlash due to a social media post. In 2017, a few years before the “Speaking Out” movement that uncovered rampant sexual harassment and other mistreatment of women in the pro wrestling world, Ospreay Tweeted his disgust about how Twitter can be used to accuse people of sexual assault. It wasn’t a great look, especially a few years later when he was accused of blacklisting a wrestler who claimed to be sexually assaulted by a friend of his.

1 Jaxson Ryker

Then there’s Jaxson Ryker. The big guy of the Forgotten Sons faction, Ryker made the decision to Tweet his support for Donald Trump following the protests over the killing of George Floyd in mid-2020, dropping his group’s “Forgotten No More” catchphrase as a hashtag for good measure. This couldn’t have gone worse, as loads of wrestlers — including his own co-workers — and fans admonished the worst guy in his faction for a post that was both callous and self-serving. What’s even worse is that Ryker late claimed that, in his younger days, he would have “hunted down” those co-workers in response.