Today we’d like to introduce you to Ryder Wood.
Thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, how did you get started?
Pro wrestling has always been a huge part of our family. I am starting back with Ryder’s great-grandfather, Les. It’s one of those things passed down from generation to generation. The Wood family’s love for pro wrestling runs deep! I (Ryder’s dad, Chad) never remember not watching wrestling. It’s always been one of those things that my dad (Clark) and I bonded over. Thankfully, things are trending in the same direction for myself and Ryder. Ryder got into wrestling at a very young age. I remember standing in front of a tiny hospital tv screen, holding my 6-hour-old newborn son and watching the latest episode of WWE Smackdown as he was ironically born on one of their show days.
Ryder grew up playing with toys, but many of those toys were WWE figures from my collection as a child. After we noticed him only playing with my wrestling figures over anything else, we bought him figures to start his collection. As many kids go in and out of trends growing up, my wife (Angela) and I thought that it would be a trend for a bit and then he’d move onto something else, but as time went on, his collection kept growing. As I said earlier, wrestling has always been a huge deal for my dad and me. If wrestling was on tv, you could bet that we would be watching it, and that’s where Ryder’s collection would begin to grow. Ryder would see a certain WWE superstar on tv, run to his small pile of figures, search out whatever wrestler was currently on tv, and then run to the tv with the figure in hand, showing my wife and me that he had a figure of the wrestler on tv. This would also pose a problem. When a wrestler would be on tv that Ryder didn’t have a figure of, that would always mean that Ryder and I would soon embark on a journey of hitting all of the local retail stores and flea markets in search of the figure he was missing. On your hunts, he and I would always blast our favorite WWE superstar’s entrance music on our way to search for our missing plastic friends. Upon finding Ryders missing pieces, we would always hurry home and tear them into the box like a child on early Christmas morning, regardless of the season.
When Ryder got a little older, he would learn how to pose his figures in their signature WWE stances and then evolve to figure out how to do the same with their signature moves. It was late one night. Ryder and I were waiting for my wife to make it home from her shift at work. As usual, Ryder was sitting on the floor with his WWE ring and figures making his WWE dream matches come to life. At this time, Ryan’s Toy Review was taking over Youtube. I remember it being all the craze. Ryder had even often requested that we turn it to Ryan’s channel so that he could watch.
I remember thinking, “Why do you want to watch this kid play with toys?” I didn’t get it, but I complied as any trying parent does. As Ryder sat on the floor that night waiting for Angela to walk through the door, I said, “Hey dude, I wonder if there are any Youtube channels like Ryan’s Toy Review, but they only focus on WWE figures?” He and I punched “WWE action figure set-up” into the search bar, and Rowdy Ryder Reviews was born unbeknownst to us with the search results. The first channel in this niche we saw was a channel by the name of “Brett-O Live.” Brett-O would take iconic WWE moments and recreate them by using his WWE figures. It was exactly what Ryder was looking for!
Much like Ryan from “Ryan’s Toy Review,” Ryder looked at me and said, “I wanna do that!” As we scrolled through Brett-O’s videos, Angela walked through the door from work. Ryder jumps up excitedly and immediately shows her what we have stumbled upon on Youtube, and for the next three weeks, our watch history was flooded by this Brett-O Live kid. Ryder would keep telling his mom and me, “I wanna do a review!” He would grab our phones, turn on the camera and conduct mock WWE toy reviews and set-ups as if he was filming for an actual YouTube channel. She and I were both very hesitant about it, being that Ryder was only four years old at the time and because of the dangerous place that the internet can be. After weeks and weeks of his asking us to make him a channel, she and I came up with the idea of him having a channel to do reviews on, my wife and I has to be in the videos and have control over his account.
A few days later, Ryder asked us again, “Can I film a review, please?” I wasn’t feeling well on this day, but my wife, at six months pregnant, decided to take on the tall task of making this vision of Ryder’s become a reality. They sat at our tiny kitchen table in our dining room and filmed a dual review on the newly released Hot Topic Exclusive Young Bucks and the regular version of Young Bucks Funko Pops. Ryder and Angela had no clue what they were doing, but their laughs and conversation during that review said otherwise. Seeing the joy this brought Ryder, seeing the fun my wife had just talking about a toy with our child. It was truly something special. Ryder would go back over and over again, watching his review. He was so proud of this. In the following weeks, instead of tearing into the boxes as usual, we decided to film Ryder’s unboxing as he had been requesting, and as they say, the rest is history.
Alright, let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what challenges have you had to overcome?
For Ryder, from the first day of starting his channel, his mom and I told him that we only wanted him to do this because it’s fun for him and something that he wants to do. We constantly ask him, “Are you still having fun?” “Do you still want to do this?” If those answers are always yes, we will keep riding this thing out. Now for myself, I find many challenges and bumps in the road, but it’s always on the technical side of things. Editing, keeping up with his social media accounts, etc., but when it’s something your kid loves to do, and they depend on you, it makes taking on those challenges much easier.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Ryder’s YouTube channel started just as a plan toy review channel that reviewed the latest WWE action figures and had Ryder give his honest review on the overall figure. Ryder’s biggest goal on the YouTube platform is to get to 100K subscribers and get the YouTube Play Button plaque. Accomplishing that by doing toy reviews in a small niche is quite the task. So over the years, we’ve decided to add more dynamics to his channel while keeping it pro wrestling based. We will do WWE PPV (Pay-Per-View) prediction videos and take his views on a virtual WWE toy hunt with us as we’re out looking for figures, WWE live show vlogs, WWE PPV reaction videos, etc. Ryder is most known for disliking current WWE Superstar Roman Reigns, haha. Being a button pusher, Ryder asked me to watch wrestling with him one night.
I said, of course, but I didn’t tell him the match we would be watching would feature Roman Reigns. At the end of Reigns’ match, Ryder got a baseball bat and smashed the tv we were watching as he had enough of Roman and his winning ways. Luckily, I am recording his reaction for his channel, but I didn’t think Ryder would do that! The video ended up going viral on YouTube. So he’s well-known not to be a fan of Roman. I’m most proud of Ryder’s reach with his viewers. Ryder has a stuttering issue. He used to be very self-conscious about that and would ask me to edit that out of his videos until a kid commented to Ryder telling him that he always wanted to start a YouTube channel but was afraid to due to a stuttering problem they have. Still, they came across Ryder’s video and noticed his stutter, which inspired this kid to make a channel. Ryder now requests that I don’t edit his stutter out. He wants others to know it’s ok to stutter and hopes to inspire others dealing with it. All in all, Ryder’s channel is about pro wrestling, but if you look closely, it’s about the journey of this kid and his dad hoping to spread some joy in someone’s day while using their love for pro wrestling as the driving force behind it all.
How would we have described you growing up if we knew you were growing up?
My wife and I have three kids together. Ryder is our oldest. He’s always been a well-behaved child. The kid has a heart of gold, which my wife and I are so proud of. His will to want to help others often leaves us speechless. I can’t even begin to count the number of times that he’s made us break down and cry from his attempt to help others. Ryder has many other interests besides pro wrestling Star Wars, yo-yos, drawing, playing basketball, collecting trading cards, and gaming. He loves to play games. He’s not far off from your typical eight-year-old kid, haha.
Contact Info:
- Website: YouTube.com/ryderwood
- Instagram: instagram.com/rowdyryderreviews
- Facebook: facebook.com/rowdyryderreviews
- Twitter: twitter.com/ryderreviews14
- Youtube: YouTube.com/ryderwood
