I just did some fact-finding on the internet, to see how long Ryback has been on WWE Television (I'm not counting when he was on TV as "Skip Sheffield"). According to my findings, the Ryback character debuted on Smackdown on June 4th of this year. That means that Ryback has only been squashing jobbers on TV for about three and a half months so far. While I personally feel like it's too early to put a championship belt around his waist, my opinion means exactly jack and squat. It looks like Vince is gonna have Ryback vie for the Intercontinental Title (my guess is at the "Hell in a Cell" PPV next month), fighting The Miz for a chance at the strap.
With Ryback, there are all kinds of comparisons to Bill Goldberg's undefeated streak; Goldberg's WCW streak began almost 15 years ago to the day (Jesus, I am getting old!), when he debuted on Nitro (which was September 22nd, 1997). It took Goldberg a little longer to get his first title, Goldberg defeated Raven for the US Strap on April 20th 1998. For those who care, Goldberg had also racked up 74 wins in his undefeated streak (beating Raven for the US Belt made it 75).
WCW waited a bit longer to get Goldberg to the "next level" than it appears WWE is doing with Ryback, but then again WCW was a vastly different company. Although Goldberg had been over with the crowd for a good long time before his US Title match with Raven, there were most likely a lot of backstage politicking going on to try to keep Goldberg down on the card (Hogan, Nash, etc).
The whole reason for talking about Goldberg's history is simple: was Goldberg "ready" to win the US Title back in 1998? I don't think so. Goldberg was still very green in the ring, despite wrestling on WCW Television for seven months. I think that although Goldberg wasn't "ready" (at least IMHO), WCW made the right decision. Goldberg was great for business back then, even if he was drawing comparisons to Stone Cold Steve Austin at the time.
I don't think that Ryback is currently as green in the ring as Goldberg was back in April of 1998, but it's possible that he hasn't been given enough TV time yet (again, my opinion doesn't matter one iota). Even though Goldberg was a little more green in the ring, I feel WCW did a better job of building him up. I remember one match in particular, Goldberg vs. Saturn. At the time, Saturn's submission hold ("The Rings of Saturn", or something like that) had been built up to be one of the most deadly holds in all of WCW. No one had broken out of it before Goldberg did. The point is simple: even though Goldberg had been fighting jobbers on free television, he had been having longer matches on PPV (albeit with midcard stars) before winning his first title. Ryback hasn't done anything like that yet, this feud with The Miz would be his first with an established WWE Superstar (if I'm not mistaken).
Even though I might not think Ryback is ready to hold any WWE gold at this point in his career, it doesn't make me any less excited to see Ryback vs. Miz in the near-future. I hope that the match is booked in such a way that Miz looks like he has a legitimate chance of winning, but it could end up being another squash. I hope that we see at least a ten minute match here, but if this match ends up happening we'll most likely see Ryback walk away with the strap.
Hopefully Ryback will have to win some kind of "number one contender" match to earn a shot at Miz's Intercontinental Title, and he won't just be inserted to the title hunt with no back story of any kind. Just tearing apart Miz's talk show set isn't enough (IMHO) to earn a shot at the gold. I hope WWE does something like that to get him into the IC Title hunt. Just sayin'.....
