wrestling / News

MVP Recalls Quitting WWE And Going to NJPW After Confrontation With WWE Executive

June 2, 2019 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas
MVP MLW: Fusion Image Credit: MLW

– MVP spoke with Vice for a new interview discussing his time in prison, rising to the top of the wrestling industry and quitting WWE to go to Japan. Highlights are below:

On making it to the top of wrestling from his troubled past: “I look back and I say, OK, from where I was to where I am… shit is still surreal for me. I remember sitting in my prison bunk as a teenager with who knows how much time left in prison wondering what could I do for a living as a convicted felon. Fast forward and I’m standing in the wrestling ring at WrestleMania across from Chris Benoit, my favorite f**king wrestler, and I’m looking around like, this is not really happening, man. Any minute now a prison guard is going to kick my bunk and tell me to wake the f**k up. As Booker T once told me, ‘Naw, little brother. You wide awake. Live it.'”

On leaving WWE for NJPW: “Yeah, Japanese wrestling is my favorite wrestling. Wrestling for New Japan Pro-Wrestling at the Tokyo Dome, that was my dream. WrestleMania and the WWE was a goal. After having been at WWE and being somebody who was being groomed to be a world champion, I ran afoul of some politics and spent three months on a losing streak. I had a confrontation with one of the executives. He came out of his mouth to me, sideways. I told him, ‘Man, you don’t talk to me like that.’ He told me to go f**k myself. At that moment I decided OK, I’m done here. I said, ‘No, you go f**k yourself.’ He stood up and he stammered, ‘I’m not afraid of you.’ I leaned in and said, ‘Man, do you want to do this here in front of your coworkers or do you want to go outside and do this like men?’ He didn’t want to fight. He wasn’t expecting me to respond that way. Because of his position, he was thinking that I was just going to say ‘OK’ like so many guys do, but I was done. Mentally, I was done. I asked to be released so that I could go follow my dream in Japan. I always wanted to wrestle in Japan, and I expressed that. They said, OK, we’ll give you a release. Come back in a year, two years, and the door is open. You’ll be a bigger star when you come back, and I never made it back.”

article topics :

MVP, WWE, Jeremy Thomas