Jeremy Granat, known to professional wrestling audiences under the ring name Ryan Taylor, was an American professional wrestler from Alabama who won the Alabama heavyweight championship twice and built a career across the independent wrestling circuit of the American Southeast that gave him a dedicated following among the regional audiences who value the live event tradition of southern professional wrestling. He died on 22 June 2026 at the age of 40.
He was born in 1986 in Alabama, growing up in the state that sits at the heart of American professional wrestling’s southern tradition. The National Wrestling Alliance’s territorial system, which structured professional wrestling in the United States from the 1950s through the 1980s, designated Alabama and the surrounding states as the territory of several regional promotions whose live events in small arenas, high school gymnasiums, and fairgrounds across the rural and small-town South provided regular entertainment for communities that embraced professional wrestling as a form of popular theatre combined with athletic competition. Alabama produced wrestlers, promoters, and passionate fans who contributed to the sport’s cultural presence in the American South across those decades.
The independent wrestling circuit that replaced the old territorial structure after the national expansion of the major promotions in the 1980s continued to maintain a real following in the Southeast, with regional championships carrying genuine prestige within the communities that followed local wrestling promotions. Independent wrestlers who built careers in the southern regional scene were working in a tradition that had its own history, its own audience expectations, and its own codes of professionalism that were distinct from but related to the major promotions whose television product reached national and international audiences. His two reigns as Alabama heavyweight champion reflected his standing as one of the more accomplished performers on the regional circuit, capable of carrying the responsibility of being the top champion of a regional promotion and delivering performances that satisfied the expectations of audiences who had been watching professional wrestling all their lives.
He worked across Alabama and neighbouring states across his career, developing in-ring skills, character work, and the physical durability that a career in professional wrestling requires across the hundreds of matches that a working independent circuit wrestler performs. Professional wrestling at the independent level involves a grinding schedule of travel to small venues across a wide geographic area, the maintenance of physical condition across constant performing demands, and the development of the ring psychology that separates performers who can make an audience believe and invest in what they are watching from those who cannot. His death at 40 ended a career that had been built in one of American professional wrestling’s most historically important regional traditions. He was 40 years old.