Swerve Strickland on His WWE Release and How A Member of Hit Row “Upset Somebody in the Back” & Feeling Like He Was Being ‘Bullshitted Around’ At WWE’s Performance Center

VladTV held a recent interview with Swerve Strickland. One of the topics discussed included Strickland’s thoughts about Hit Row’s initial release as a group from WWE in November of 2021. This initial group featured Isaiah “Swerve” Scott (Swerve Strickland in AEW), Ashante “Thee” Adonis, Top Dolla (AJ Francis in TNA), and B-Fab.

“Coming up, I think there was a contract dispute with the girl of the group, Brianna [B-Fab]. That’s speculative, I’m not sure that’s 100% true. Shoutout Bri, she’s still dope, she’s still up there now. They brought her back. Something happened with that. As soon as we got drafted, the following week, we did a promo, and then she wasn’t getting flight information to be at SmackDown. It just kind of disappeared. It was like, ‘We all got ours. Where’s yours?’ ‘I didn’t get mine yet.’ So we were all talking amongst each other, like, no, we didn’t get it. It’s getting closer and closer to the flight time. Where’s Bri at? ‘I still have no flight, I still don’t have anything.’ It’s literally just got taken off, she got the flight, and then it just went away, it disappeared. I was like, yo, what’s going on? We’re on the flight, we’re coming down, and we start getting our notifications, and we’re seeing all these releases happening. Ricochet is right next to me on the other aisle, he just looks at his phone and looks at me like, ‘Yo.’ All the talent is just looking at all their friends just getting fired. It’s like a group of eight people just got fired that day. That whole year, I think they let go of 150 talent and staff. This was coming straight out of COVID, too, and during that COVID year, WWE had to keep running. They worked something out with Florida, the governor of Florida, that it’s like it could keep running through COVID, like grocery stores, hospitals, police officers, WWE. [Laughs] I don’t know how, but that’s a necessity for survival in Florida. So we were able to run through, but they lost a lot of money, just to keep production running and not touring, and not able to go overseas. We lost a lot of money, so had to get it back somehow. So a lot of talent, staff just got let go. So something happened there. She was on the list. My girlfriend at the time, she was on the list, she got let go.”

Strickland also gave his thoughts about his meeting with Vince McMahon at the time and being scolded by McMahon over how someone in the group had upset someone else backstage.

“Then we meet with Vince [McMahon] or whatever. Apparently, one of the members of the group was just, they complained at the office because he was calling, asking her for her flight, what’s going on. They’re like, ‘We can’t disclose that information to you.’ He’s like, ‘What?’ He started getting aggressive on the phone apparently at Titan Towers. So we’re meeting with Vince. We have to talk to Vince about this because he was apparently upset with it. He was like, ‘First off, that’s none of your business. You’re a talent, you do this. You worry about what you do. Don’t worry about anybody else, even if it’s in your group. You worry about what you do. That’s how we do here. That’s a respect thing.’ We’re just sitting there in the hallway of this arena, Bruce Prichard behind him, [John] Laurinaitis behind him, and Vince is right here, and they’re just sitting there, standing like puppy dogs, watching Vince just bark at us [laughs]. I was just like, wow. I think that heat got on us right there. He’s just like, ‘Nobody just asks for a meeting with me. There’s people that work for me 15 years that’s never had a meeting with me.’ I was like, ‘Oh, cool. I feel honored now’ [laughs]. We got the little bit of scolding, but it was just the one member of the group that made that call, and apparently who he was talking to in the office complained about he was ‘aggressive’ on the phone or whatever. Who’s to say how that conversation actually went. Probably a recorded phone call somewhere, I don’t know. But real quick, Vince was talking about that, and then he switched it like, ‘But we’re gonna have a lot of fun tonight, guys. We’re gonna have a lot of fun. We got some good stuff for you coming up.’ I was like okay, cool. We did a segment with Sami Zayn on SmackDown. Came in the back, shook Vince’s hand, [he’s] like, ‘That was great. You gotta smile. Make sure you put that smile on out there, whatever.’ Cool, cool. Go to the back of the locker room. We were like, ‘Okay, I think that went well.’ Then Sami Zayn comes back, he’s like, Apparently, Vince didn’t like it. Vince hated it.’ We’re like, we just saw him five minutes ago. He’s like, ‘Yup, apparently, he just didn’t like it.’ Okay.

Next thing you know, one of the group members gets appendicitis, he can’t wrestle. So now it’s just left [to] me and the big guy to have these tag matches. Apparently, he upset somebody in the back somewhere, somehow. I’ll never forget to this day, it was before the show, rehearsal and everything. We go over the segment. I come through the back, and Bruce Prichard’s just sitting by himself in the Gorilla Position. He’s like, ‘Hey, Swerve.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah?’ He’s like, ‘You know you’re the veteran of this group, right? You’ve been doing this the longest. You have the most experience.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I do.’ He’s like, ‘Alright, take control.’ I was like, ‘Okay.’ Two weeks later, we all get let go. That was the last time…then all these reports coming out about what happened, what possibly happened, and it was like speculative heat, major heat on one individual that caused everybody to get released and all that, which might have been true. Then I’m hearing from talents I’m close with, they’re like, ‘Yeah, it was him. Yeah, it was him.’ I’m like, damn. Then, 90 days until I can get hired and get a new job.”

Strickland also gave his thoughts about his time working with WWE CCO Paul “Triple H” Levesque and how he felt they did not gel together. Strickland also felt like he was being “bullshitted” around at WWE’s Performance Center.

“The one day I knew I was getting bullshitted around the PC was when I was there for three or four months, and I got called to do 205 Live against Drew Gulak, who had the Cruiserweight Championship. 205 Live is a show that takes place after SmackDown. So after SmackDown, you see the Roman Reigns, you see all those big names. They close off SmackDown, then they do another show for the extra content on the WWE Network at the time. It was three matches, and we were the last one. It was me and Drew Gulak, we went 18 minutes in the ring, straight, for the Cruiserweight Championship. Everybody’s on their feet, going crazy. I have Swerve’s House signs, going after Roman, I have Swerve’s House signs. They’re not chanting, ‘This is awesome.’ They’re chanting, ‘Let’s go Swerve.’ They’re actually rooting for me to win this title. I end up losing to Drew Gulak. Got great praise in the back afterwards. Charlotte [Flair], Bayley, Kofi [Kingston], Samoa Joe, everybody’s giving me crazy praise. I come back to the PC, and they’re trying to teach you arm drags again. I’m like, get the fuck out of here with that [laughs]. They’re trying to tell me how to entertain 400 people in NXT when I just entertained 6,000 in a stadium. I’m like, why are you trying to backtrack me? I already showcased what I can do in front of 6,000. Mind you, that’s the end game to all this. The end game is to get me there, of what this product is. That’s like, you don’t bring the guy from the G League, he drops 30 in the NBA, and come back to practice back at the G League, and it’s like, ‘Let’s put him on the bench. He needs more development.’ I’m like, I just dropped 30 on Giannis. What are we doing? So that was the mindset I had. It was kind of too brash, it was too over-thinking, and there’s where I kind of clashed with Triple H, as far as we didn’t gel. I really gelled with Shawn Michaels. Shawn Michaels was the one, because he didn’t have the full power, he was just an advocate, and he as a partner to Triple H because he was more hands on with the talent. Out of all the coaches and all the people and the staff there, Triple H still had to go to the main roster and SmackDown and Raw and do a lot of these public appearances. He still had to do the shareholder meetings and all that, so he couldn’t be there every day, but he was there pretty often. Shawn is the only one out of all those coaches that could really teach you how to be a top main event star. That’s the only one there. So I’m like, that’s who I need to get with. Why can’t I get with him?”

Strickland also gave his thoughts about his meeting with WWE officials Matt Bloom and Canyon Ceman and how he made it clear that he wanted to work with Shawn Michaels.

“I was like, ‘I want to get in Shawn Michaels’ class.’ ‘Well, Shawn, he’s not really doing classes right now. He’s not really holding classes because he’s so busy with the show.’ I was like, ‘Well, can I get a meeting with him.’ He was like, ‘I mean, his office is right over there.’ Bet. Went over there, found Shawn. I was like, ‘Hey Shawn, do you mind if I do tape studies with you?’ He’s like, ‘Absolutely.’ I’m like, it’s that fucking easy? I’ve been here a year and a half, and I could have just walked up to his office? But that’s those things, they don’t give you those curriculums. That’s not part of it. That’s the game. They want that run-around until you earn the ‘sweat equity’ to be able to go over there, to be like, oh, now you’re worthy of talking to Shawn because you put in all this stuff.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com 1 & 2