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TJP On Why He Got Released From WWE, Shoots Down Rumor His Tattoos Caused Release, Talks Pitching Ideas to Vince McMahon

April 10, 2020 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas
TJP Impact Image Credit: WWE

TJP appeared on Josh Talks and during the interview addressed rumors about his WWE release. The former Cruiserweight Champion was the subject of a rumor following his release in February 2019 that attitude issues and getting new ink without notifying WWE officials caused his release.

Talking with Josh, TJP shot down this claims and talked about his his release actually came about, as well as how he pitched ideas to Vince McMahon and more. Highlights and the full video are below:

On the rumor that he got released because of his tattoos: “Right, right, right. [laughs] Zero [of it is true]. None of it. It’s not even logical, to be honest because I think like — one, it stems from people really wanting my separation from them to be this behavioral thing. Because that comes from people that really don’t like me. And that’s fine. I don’t mind that people don’t like me. But it’s not like — it has nothing to do with me having problems or anything like that. And tattoos, I think was just like a scapegoat for them, looking for a reason for why, like, I would have [been fired]. Which, to be honest, it would be kind of cool to be fired over tattoos if that was the case. I think that’s a pretty rock & roll thing to get fired for; I think that’s pretty awesome. In fact, I kind of wish that was the case.”

On his video game-inspired character: “The reality was, I spent a year asking to do different stuff. And mostly, I wanted to get back to representing Filipino-Americans and Asian-Americans like how I was in the Cruiserweight Classic. I felt like that was what my value was to the company. If you notice, from the time I got on Raw and onward, because I was passed from one team to another the second time that got me didn’t really understand what it was that we were doing in the tournament … so they kind of asked me what I wanted to do, and I was like ‘Well, if I have to create an aesthetic, I wanted to create Scott Pilgrim, Ready Player One, that sort of thing.

“So I said, let’s do that because that’s a significant part of my life as a person, and it’s also something that’s appealing … and there’s not too many guys who have that aesthetic. Like, Kenny Omega has it. There’s not a lot of guys. And I felt that especially our generation came up on Nintendo, and came up on Back to the Future and stuff like that. There’s this whole retro era for us, and for like mid to young, slightly older adults. There’s nobody for us, you know. It’s either these Game of Thrones-looking heavyweight dudes with beards and ponytails, or these young, slender, flippy Spider-Man-like dudes. And there’s not a lot of diversity in-between, especially in that company for a while.”

On pitching the ideas to Vince McMahon: “I told him, like, I wanted to get back to that and I felt like I was wasting his time, wasting his money. This was like 2018, so I spent a year kind of explaining to him, ‘I’m not happy with what I’m doing, and I don’t want to waste your time, I don’t want to waste your money. So can I do something better and be more valuable to you. I don’t care where I go. You could send me to the UK, you could send me back to NXT, you could put me on Smackdown, do whatever. It doesn’t matter to me, I just want to do that. Be an ambassador, in and out of the ring. What Eddie was to Latino fans, I wanted to be for Asian-Americans. I said, that’s what worked coming in. That’s what got the fanbase I have now that you were pushing all these video game T-shirts to … that success is based upon that. Not because video games are a cool topic, so let me get back to that.”

On how that led to his release: “So he said, ‘cool,’ and we tried to just pitch ideas back and forth. And I wrote for everybody, man. I wrote stories for me and Elias, me and Jinder, me and Finn, me and Bobby Lashley, me and Lio [Rush], me and whoever. Every person on every roster, I wrote a story for of what I thought I could do with them. And it just, none of them were a good fit in his eyes, so he didn’t really know what to do. And after a while, it just got to be where he didn’t want me to stay being unhappy, and he was like, ‘I know you wanna just spread your wings a little bit, but I don’t know what would be a good fit to do this, on what show. So I don’t want you to just go back to the bench.’

“And I guess that’s sort of the risk when you raise your hand to stand up, and volunteer to do more? They know — because he knows that they’re wasting money on people that don’t do anything. Like, that’s just reality. They have a cupboard full of guys, and they know there’s tons of people they can cut. But he’s not going to take the time throughout the week to be like, ‘Let’s fire a whole bunch of people.’ He’s just going to be like, ‘Whatever, let’s worry about Cena right now, let’s worry about Roman. Let’s do the important stuff. But when you volunteer and say, ‘Hey, you are wasting your time with me.’ Now you kind of stand out. So if it doesn’t work out, you’re kind of playing with fire a little bit.”

On being okay with his release: “But I mean, I was happy to do it. Because I did want to go back to Japan. If I wasn’t going to do this, I wanted to go back to New Japan, I wanted to go and do other stuff, so it was really more about me being happy.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Josh Talks with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.

article topics :

TJP, Vince McMahon, WWE, Jeremy Thomas