Nic Nemeth Reveals He Almost Left WWE Over Goldberg Match at Summerslam 2019

In an interview with Chris Van Vliet for Insight, Nic Nemeth revealed that he almost left WWE back in 2019 over the way his match with Goldberg at Summerslam 2019 was laid out. Here are highlights:

On signing with TNA: “There were so many people that were letting me know that I was going to AEW that they confused themselves to be extra surprised because they had told me that I was going there. They let me know they knew I was, and they were so blown away by this surprise. I go, I didn’t lead you to believe that, you told me, I didn’t tell you. So many people were like, ‘Hey, 91 days [after your WWE release], I know where you’re going.’ I’m like, Hey, cool. I’m not sure, but hey, let me know.”

On if he asked for his release from WWE: “Yes. So I said, ‘Do me a favor. Let’s do this as soon as possible, or I’m down to talk if you want to say something else or go with some different route.’ But I go about a year and a half into the three years, or just under two years, and nobody wrote me back, except for Vince. And he said, ‘Wow, this is incredible. This is a lot to read. I’m not sure what to do.’ And I said, ‘Vince, I will fly to Stanford tomorrow morning and we will finish this or talk about it, or find a new role, or at least let me go away for five years, something.’ He goes, ‘Give me a week to think about it.’ I said, ‘I really want to figure this out right now.’ He goes, ‘Give me one week. It’s a lot to process.’ I said, okay, and the next week I was on the list of people who were released. So, yeah, it worked, if they were not in the process of cutting some things to trimming the fat to be purchased by another company, I would assume that I would been in there for another year and a half or so.”

On if he was close to joining AEW: “I wasn’t. I love so many people there. I’ve had a couple of conversations with Tony in the past, and I rooted for those guys every step of the way. AEW being a thing helped a bunch of people out, worst-case scenario, with negotiating and setting up their career for years down the line. I go if this ends in two or three years, it helped a bunch of people out and put some other people on TV, and they’re rocking and rolling and doing their thing. I watched every Wednesday, because I have to talk about it on Thursday. And it’s another one where I gotta watch wrestling. It’s like kind of a joke, but I’ve like come to learn all the people on the show and watching what they do. If I could do all the stuff that everyone does, their top circle, the whole show, really, it has so many different moving parts and pieces to it that I don’t know that I could, from my old style. I can adapt to anything, and I have been, and I even watched. The 2025 version of me still applies some different things that I wouldn’t have done a few years ago. But I don’t know if in a 35-45 minute match, if it wasn’t with me and Bryan Danielson or Jon Moxley, those guys where I know what they’ve done, and I can move around and do some things, but it’s like, if it’s remembering a sequence like I’m getting 30 guys in Contra every two minutes, I would be more vacant in the match, instead of like feeling the emotion and just remembering it. I go, I don’t know how they do it, but when it comes to those pay-per-views, they blow the roof off, and it’s incredible. And I just really thought with TNA, I go, I will never, ever be Kurt Angle. He’s just my hero, but I know that he did something special with going to TNA and I go, maybe, just maybe, this guy that a bunch of people, most people, seem to respect and have been waiting to see what I can do, maybe me showing up here and being involved could be another spark that does something, because they’re already getting talked about and making some moves, and they’ve been a insane brand for years. But I go, maybe, just maybe, me being there makes this a bigger and better place by 1%. Then falling in love with the locker room and everyone behind the scenes, I just go, this is the fit. I wasn’t going to go anywhere. I didn’t want to. A couple dates for somebody and a couple dates at AEW, 100% I would have done that. But I just go I need to travel the world and be able to sleep at night knowing that I can go, because I talked this sh*t for 15 years. No one’s better, no one can follow me. Sorry about the booking, but that’s not my call. And it’s like, now it’s like, back it up or don’t. And I had to, and I would have gone almost anywhere for a few dates just to check it out, but TNA was the fit. I would have watched their progression from the outside if I wasn’t there, but I’m rooting for all those guys and girls.”

On how much longer he intends to wrestle: “Every once in a while, I do. I don’t understand how, the way I bump and move my body around and as a workaholic and fly so much, how I am not in more pain and I’m not injured more.”

On a possible WWE Hall of Fame induction: “I guess I think everybody kind of gets in eventually, but listening to that [my accomplishments], it’s like, it’s awesome. I know I downplayed the US Title a little bit, and sometimes it was just like, I’ve been there before, which is like, Hey, we got a bunch of heels going over in this pay-per-view Kofi has to win this match and win the US title back for you after like, two weeks, and you’re like, okay, and it doesn’t make sense. But there’s a lot of times where it did matter and make sense, and it felt good to be like oh, we have a good story, and now a title is involved, and now I’m fighting for it. And now I got it. Now it got taken away from me. Oh, I gotta chase it again. There’s a lot, I would say 70% of those things that you announced were like, I’m picturing the pay-per-view that led to it, or where we went afterwards. And it was like, that’s, that’s what I like. And that 1554 matches on TV would have been so much more if I wasn’t always, like, getting yelled at and taken off the show. Sometimes I really feel like there’s 10 more TV matches we could have got in there.”

On wrestling Goldberg at SummerSlam 2019: “So I assumed it would be two minutes of heat, but like me moving out of the way, him taking himself out to a turnbuckle, and then a couple of moves from him, and we go to his finish or something. And I was told no, ding, ding, ding, spear, jackhammer. I said ‘Vince, why am I in this match when anybody could take a spear and a jackhammer?’ We built this up. We pretended it was gonna be Miz, then we pretend it was gonna be Shawn Michaels for one night. And we had this face-off, just so you could play the Goldberg music and make this. What’s the point of Ding, ding, ding spear Jachammer? I go, a local could do it, anybody could do it. And he was like, ‘Well, I don’t know what he can do with you.’ I go, ‘If I can’t be in this match doing something, then I have to leave this company right now.’ And I’m not kidding, if this is purely for someone a scarecrow, to take a spear and a jackhammer, I don’t want to work here. And also, it was supposed to be my second to last night. Anyway, we’ll get to that in a minute. I’m fighting with him all day, and luckily, I’m at a point at in 2019 where it’s like, I’m not just gonna go, Okay, you’re right. I should just take the moves. I’m fighting. I’m like, it should be something. I should kick him. I should hit him with my finish. I should do something where he has to come up out of it, and we were just going to his finisher anyway. But there should be something other than a bell, because then there’s no little ride, there’s no anything. There’s just a finisher. And if the crowd’s hot on his entrance, they don’t get hotter. We don’t take them down. We don’t bring them up. I pitched a million different ways to do something, and finally it was a super kick on the bell, get a false out of it. Super kick him again, and then get broken in half. And I go, Yeah, okay, that’s something, at least. There’s some up and down that we can go with. And I love Renee, happens to be on the call there, and I love making fun of her, because she’s so good at so many things in our business. It really pisses me off. She’s so good at like, 57 out of 58 things in our business. She’s not great at calling action, which I get to bust her balls for, which is great, but she’s so good at everything. But I love she didn’t know what we were doing, and it’s just ding, ding, ding. And we both stand there, and I hit him under the chin with my super kick try and kind of put him down. And she just goes, ‘Oh my God!’ I really go now we got them for a second. That’s all we needed was something, if we get them on a close kick out here, at the time, super kick was my finish. If we get them, if he’s just, like, not kicking out at zero, he’s a hero, like, let’s get 1, 2, oh! And we got two moments out of one move, and he’s just gonna spear me anyway. And of course, he kicked out at one or something, because he’s really good at wrestling. Then we got to the second one, and I spaced it out. I go, break me in half, and he did, and we got to get a couple more out of it, and it genuinely hurt like hell every time. But that’s part of the business, that’s the deal. At the beginning of the day, it was pretty easy to go around a few different things, but the spears really hurt. And I was just like, man, getting out of that last one before he was leaving. I was like, Man, I got one more, just get up and take it. It’s gonna be all right. But that’s how it should be for crazy spears. For someone who works once a year, or is in the match once a year or something, it should be like a badass spear, and it should be real, and I might have a cracked rib or something. I didn’t, but I would have been fine with things. That’s part of the deal. But I was pitched the idea to go with Goldberg because I was going to leave the company. It was going to be, I’ll leave the names out of it who pitched the idea to me who said, ‘Everything that you do when you put over so many people. Other people put over someone when they leave. You’re the only person who’s going to put over two people on the way out, because we know you can.’ And I went, Oh! I was drinking the Kool-Aid. They didn’t believe in it. But I was like, Oh yeah, you know what? Damn it. Goldberg on Sunday, and that Monday, I wrestle Miz with my career on the line, and he beats me. I wanted to make sure he tapped me out with his version of the figure four, but some version of that to like I’m helping my friend on the way out. I’m giving his figure four the best sell that he’ll ever have. So that gets passed on to him. And I lost on Sunday to Goldberg, I’ll lose there to Mike, and then I was out of the company and on a handshake deal, I was out. And that day I was told that I would not be allowed to be out.”

On a possible WWE return: “Maybe, but I really love what I’m doing. I really, really love what we’re doing as a company, and what I get to do on my free time, plus with the company. So sure, possibly something. [But still be with TNA?] Yeah, and that’s fine. I’ve said this since they started talking together and making things public about everything with WWE relationship, I said, if I can help TNA get something, I will be there. If it’s to go to NXT and have a match, I’m not interested. I’ve done everything I’ve could possibly do in NXT, and if it’s to do something with someone that I worked with, like Randy or Cody or Seth or something, I would be open to it if it helped TNA do something, or make a stride, or just get some kind of box checked to help us out. But I otherwise, I will be cheering along on the outside.”