Former WCW personality passes away

One of Chris Jericho’s greatest allies in WCW, Ralphus, reportedly passed away last year according to Jericho himself. Jericho mentioned on his Saturday Night Special stream after All Out that Ralphus, real name John Riker, passed sometime in 2019.

Jericho said when asked about Ralphus, “I just found out he passed away like last year. God bless John Riker, that was his real name.”

Riker worked as a truck driver for WCW when Jericho got paired up with him during Jericho’s run as WCW Television Champion when he was calling out Goldberg for the feud that never happened. Jericho had Ralphus as a personal security agent and the character got incredibly over with the audience. Ralphus would eventually go on to be paired with Norman Smiley in 2000 after Jericho jumped ship to WWE and even had a few matches, three of which were handicap matches with Smiley against Terry Funk and then Big Vito, and one a singles match against Vito. All of them were losses.

Following the end of his WCW run, Ralphus made some appearances at wrestling conventions and did some signings. He didn’t continue working in the business after.