David Penzer Says It Wasn’t His Decision To Leave TNA, Says Passing Mic To Jade Chung Is A ‘Source of Pride’

In an interview with WrestleZone (via Fightful), David Penzer spoke about his exit from TNA Wrestling back in December, which he said was not his decision. He would be replaced by Jade Chung, and noted that passing her the microphone was a ‘source of pride’ for him. He said:

“It wasn’t my decision. About six months before probably about mid summer, Scott [D’Amore] came to me. Well, first he called me over. Despite the fact that I’ve known him for 30 years and we’re friends, he hardly ever waves his finger like come over here, so I was like, here we go. He goes, no, nothing to worry about, but I do wanna tell you before we talked about it in the production meeting that Jade Chung is going to do the Before The IMPACT matches, the pre-show matches so to speak. I thought that maybe that was it for me and he goes, ‘Well, you can’t do this forever.’ I said, ‘Well, I understand that.’ He said, ‘There might be a time coming up where it might come to an end for now.’ I said, ‘Could you give me an estimation, I don’t wanna have to worry about it.’ He goes, ‘You’re good through at least the end of the year.’”

“What I didn’t know and that he couldn’t tell me is that he was bringing TNA back and he wanted a new look. He made it clear that I was passing the mic to Jade, so I took that as a great source of pride. Gary Cappetta passed the mic to me, I wanted to help her out as much as I can. She’s really a natural at it, so there really wasn’t all that much. A lot of what they tell you from the truck and stuff was what she was more concerned about, she already knew how to talk on the microphone.”

“Then they brought me up to Toronto for that Resolution show and I’m thinking to myself, who does this? My replacement is there. Who flies you up to a one-off show from Florida, pays you, puts you up in a hotel room? I just thought that was incredibly classy of Scott to do. What was supposed to happen at the end of the show, because this was the last IMPACT show, what was said on the format was that talent come out and say goodbye to IMPACT. What I had no freaking clue and was absolutely still blown away by is that Scott had arranged for all of them to come out and say goodbye to me! He gave me a beautiful plaque and really put me over. The crowd was chanting ‘Thank You Penzer’ and that means so much to me. It didn’t have to be done, they’re a small company, they could’ve used that money somewhere else but they did it for me and that means a lot.”