Bob Ryder – Original ECW

This page is about Bob Ryder during the original ECW promotion.

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Content found in the public domain pertaining to Bob Ryder and ECW.

Bob Ryder passed away in November 2020. Here are resources describing his contributions to ECW:

Wikipedia mentions his being involved with ECW here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Ryder

In 2024, Mike Johnson wrote this about Bob on the PWInsider.com website:

With Bob Ryder being inducted in the TNA Hall of Fame, I was wondering about it being reported he worked for ECW and was the ECW webmaster?  Wasn’t that Dave Scherer?  

Dave was the webmaster of ECWWrestling.com. 

Bob never worked for ECW.  That would 100% incorrect and if someone stated he was an employee of ECW, that’s a lie.  He never collected a check from ECW as a regular employee the way a Tommy Dreamer, for example, would have.

Bob, like a lot of others, tried to help ECW when he could, because he liked and appreciated the company and what they were trying to do – and saw there were things he could do to help and offer that they, as a tiny mom and pop shop, didn’t have the ability or time to handle themselves.  He flew himself to Philly to do live coverage of the shows for the old Prodigy wrestling area.  That was for Prodigy, not ECW.  I am sure that through Bob’s travel company, he helped ECW by booking travel and trying to get them good rates, but he was never an employee.  He never tried to get a job with ECW.  He was later hired by WCW, but that’s a completely different situation.  He worked for WCW.  He liked and tried to help ECW.  Big difference.

What Bob did do, since Paul Heyman was overwhelmed and didn’t have time for this, was buy the domain name of ECWWrestling.com and put the website up for the company, on his own dime.  He later sold half of the ECW site and 1Wrestling.com to Joey Styles and the two were partners in both sites. When Bob went to work for WCW, he sold his half of the ECW site to Paul Heyman.

Dave Scherer was the point person running the ECW site, and for most of that run, he and others were doing it as volunteer work, because, again, they believed in what ECW was doing.  I was part of that crew and involved every day, so I think I’d know what the deal was.  — Read the full article here: https://www.pwinsider.com/article/189373/bob-ryder-in-the-tna-hall-of-fame-the-ryder-book-no-one-can-find-correcting-false-reports-on-bob-allegedly-working-for-ecw-and-more.html?p=1

ECW referee Jim Molineaux was quoted on this website page about Bob:

With ECW, Ryder ran the renegade promotion’s website with Dave Scherer, and, helped with travel, noted Jim Molineaux. “I dealt with him on a regular basis when his travel agency did travel for ECW. And of course we would see each other at many ECW shows,” he wrote on Twitter. — https://slamwrestling.net/index.php/2020/11/25/bob-ryder-key-behind-the-scenes-player-dies/

Mike and PWinsider.com also posted this in late 2020 after the news about Bob’s passing was public:

Ryder was a true pioneer in the emerging Internet era of wrestling in the late 1990s.  A lifelong fan who owned a travel agency in Baton Rouge, LA, Ryder found himself volunteering to head up the professional wrestling area of one of the two dominant online service providers of the era, Prodigy.  Ryder began reaching out to personalities in the business for interviews and hosted the first-ever online WWF chat at Wrestlemania 11 in Hartford, CT with Shawn Michaels and Kevin Nash.  He would also regularly travel to live events for WCW and ECW, providing live coverage for Prodigy chat rooms, even paying to have a specific phone line installed in the ECW Arena for those events to insure he would be able to get online in the jurassic days before Wifi. — Read the full post at this link: https://www.pwinsider.com/article/141670/bob-ryder-passes-away.html?p=1

If you wish to learn more about other ECW alumni then click this link: ECW roster and employees

If you would like to watch original ECW video content on the WWE Network (or Peacock Network) then visit this link: ECW on the WWE Network