Nic Nemeth recently appeared as a guest on Busted Open Radio for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling.
During the discussion, the longtime WWE Superstar formerly known as Dolph Ziggler spoke at length about his departure from the company.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the episode where he touches on this topic with his thoughts.
On how he was prepared for his WWE departure before it happened: “I was prepared. For the last six, eight, ten months going, ‘At some point, I have to make a change here.’ As you get ready to go and see you don’t have a chance to be in a PPV match and steal the show. You don’t have a chance to have a six-minute match to steal the show. You have a match and it’s three minutes and you don’t get an entrance and everyone knows who is winning. Can I find a way to have that work? Once that started happening, even a couple of years ago when Roode [Bobby Roode] and I were tagging, I was thinking, ‘At some point, I have to be ready to go. Will my shape and stamina still be there?’ I have been preparing so long and getting things ready to go, it wasn’t ‘What? What do I do now? I’m free.’ I was planning for half of this entire last contract going, ‘I know at some point, I’m being paid way too much to sit at home so I’m gonna have to get out of here.’ I always wanted to be ready to go, just in case they said, ‘I know you’ve been doing 90-second matches, can you do 30 minutes with The Undertaker?’ You’re damn right I can.”
On how he actually asked “the boss” in WWE if he could move on as he didn’t want to sit on the sidelines any longer: “I was ready to go anyway, I just wanted to have every option available. It wasn’t out of the blue. I had sent emails to the boss over the last few months saying, ‘I have to move on to somewhere else, can you let me do this?’ Eventually, without exact back and forth, that’s how it worked out. It wasn’t weird because it was so six, eight, ten months in place going, ‘Here it comes.’ Now, I have 90 days sitting around, which broke my heart, but I just got extra workouts.”
Check out the complete episode of the show at SiriusXM.com. H/T to Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.
