Donovan Dijak recently spoke about announcing the expiration of his WWE contract, his time in WWE and more in a new interview. Dijak spoke with Tru Heel Heat Wrestling and you can see a few highlights below (courtesy of Wrestling Inc):
On announcing his contract ending: “Obviously, Cody’s thing played a role, right? You know, this is a guy who — I was in communication with him at the end of his run as Stardust, and as he made that post … So, yeah, that was certainly an influence. It wasn’t the same story, but it was a similar path. Obviously, [Rhodes] chose his. Mine was not a choice. I didn’t choose that. I might have chosen that, depending [on] the circumstances, I don’t know.”
On never having a real conversation about his spot on the main roster: “Unfortunately, we never had an opportunity for that conversation, because — I don’t know if they got stuck on money or what, because I was never given an explanation. So, I don’t know whether … if they had made me an offer, I’d still be there.”
On being grateful for his time there: “I kind of settled on this letter because I felt like … people deserved to hear the truth, right? And the truth isn’t always amazing. It’s not always a super positive thing. In this instance, it wasn’t a super positive thing. My goal wasn’t to create this picture that WWE was this horrible place. It wasn’t. I never said it was a horrible place. I said I was thankful, so I liked my time in WWE. I was also disappointed, mostly with how it ended, and excited for the future. Other than that, I just told the truth.”
On not intending to be criticizing WWE with his letter: “Some people were super critical of WWE; some people were super critical of me! People feel like I’m just constantly complaining about everything — which, I’m not, obviously. What happens is that I do these interviews, [and] I say the truth, and then somebody grabs a sentence or two from it, and clips it, and says, ‘This is what he said.’ Then, it feels like I’m just offering these things, as opposed to being asked a question and answering it honestly.”
On the original plans for RETRIBUTION’s leader: “I heard a rumor that before that it was supposed to be Finn Balor but he was doing something, I think the timing was off because he was slated to go down to NXT to become the NXT champion. I pitched like Vince himself, I pitched Shane McMahon. We had like a list at one point because basically I was just listing like the most important people I could think of because I wanted Vince to like love this story… They went with Ali and frankly, I doubt he wanted to do it.”
