Ryan Nemeth Helping To Fight Mental Health Stigma In Wrestling; Wants Bigger Backstage Role In AEW

Ryan Nemeth talks about what he wants out of his role in AEW.

Ryan Nemeth is much more than Dolph Ziggler’s brother. Nemeth is a filmmaker and his film, ‘Heel’ has been spotlighted at several film festivals and has even been up for Oscar-qualifying consideration. Now, Ryan is talking about his hope to have his role in AEW grow in the future in a backstage capacity.

Speaking recently on Into The Danger Zone with Chris Denker, Nemeth detailed his desires for his future 

“Because AEW is so new, it’s hard for me right now to say what the endgame is there because it’s still kind of liquid and figuring out who the company itself is. So it’s hard for me to say what an end game with AEW is, but I would like my role as a trusted talent and behind-the-scenes person to increase more and more and more and more, so whatever that means. I don’t know what the endgame of that is, but that’s what I want with AEW. Outside of AEW, my endgame is to continue acting and filmmaking. I guess the same thing for both, just to have them to go, ‘More, more, more, more, more.’”

Furthermore, Nemeth spoke about how he takes care of his mental health, noting that after the tragic passing of Daffney, he worked on a project to normalize the discussion around mental health in order to help new wrestlers end the stigma.

“For my own mental health. I do meditation, I do reading, and stuff but I was very struck by a few months ago as many in the wrestling world were by these tragic events of Daffney, man, sucks. So that day, maybe not that day, maybe a day later, I decided to do this project. I wanted to get rid of the idea of, ‘If you care about your mental health, you’re a sissy or it’s not a manly thing to do.’ So, I, with the blessing of AEW, sent out this email of the roster and said, ‘If anyone wants to speak about their ways of dealing with this, you know, get a hold of Ryan…’. So this is just for the roster, I put together this thing of some of the more masculine or hardass kind of manly guys on the roster, and a few of the women also, to speak about their personal ways [to deal with their mental health], whether it’s medication, counseling, therapy, whatever.

“My goal with that was to show younger members on the roster, or whoever else might benefit from it. Hey, this is I shouldn’t think about it as caring about my brain as a sissy thing to do. Like, yeah, this guy or this woman who I think of as this badass performer, is very open about saying, ‘I’m vulnerable, I have weaknesses, and this helps me so maybe it’ll help you too.’ So Megha, our crisis counselor and attorney has been so helpful and given me data and info and I put together this video package just for the roster, it’s not for a public thing. It’s not for me trying to get likes and whatever. Yeah, sure, that’s fine if he will do that. But like, my goal was like, literally, I want to help one or two people in this company. I don’t care about having a Twitter viral video, like, it’s great that you can do that. That’s cool, but I’m going to offer real testimonials and actual tangible means of support to people who may need it who are in the insane business of pro wrestling. So yeah, that is something just wrapped up this week and sent to them for their approval. Hopefully, that will go out privately to the roster soon.”

He continued, “I’m not a therapist. I’m not a crisis counselor, but I’m a filmmaker and I’m good at producing things so that that’s where I thought like okay, ‘What can I do? I can get all these things together and these people trust me enough to speak on camera, edit it, you know, produce it, and give it, and hopefully, that’ll help someone.”

A video, which you can see above, was released recently by AEW featuring its wrestlers talking about mental health. Nemeth tweeted his gratitude toward fans for their positive response. 

I’m so happy this came together so perfectly. Thank you to each of these stars for sharing their personal mental health journeys. I’m very proud to know them. (If you or someone you know is struggling, there is some helpful info at the end of the video.) pic.twitter.com/g9gIpztmIu

— Ryan Nemeth (@ryrynemnem) November 28, 2021

AEW recently hired Amanda Huber to help expand efforts with their community outreach program. Also, the Jon Huber Legacy Foundation was started. This is something that Ryan Nemeth says is close to his heart, noting that he has started selling prints of a portrait that he made of Jon (Brodie Lee). Learn more about the formation of the foundation here.

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