10 Questions With TNA World Champion Drew Galloway
4. WWE Release: Should You Have Expected It?
You were cut from your WWE contract on June 12, 2014, along with Jinder Mahal, JTG, Brodus Clay, Teddy Long and others. I’m told that you didn’t see your release coming. Reassessing your 2014 WWE career trajectory today, do you think you should have done?
“Erm, yes. 3MB were on house shows, TV. Whatever else was going on around us, 3MB was there in some sort of fashion. We always got a good response. In that sense, no. But if I take a step back and look at it, I guess [WWE] was thinking: ‘We need to free up X amount of money. Where are we going to go with this gimmick? Is it going to go where we want it to go? Probably not. What is the gimmick? The gimmick is basically Heath’s gimmick. Drew and Jinder are two young guys. Let’s give them some time away [from WWE] and see what happens.’
“That’s the way it was put to me [by WWE]. I saw it as an opportunity. At first, I was, like, ‘Oh, well. It’s a little scary.’ But I sat down and thought about it and pictured every crazy idea I’ve had in my head, and I thought to myself, ‘Now, it’s time to go out and be my own boss, take what I’ve learned and the TV time WWE has given me, and go out there and apply it and prove to everybody that I can do this at the highest level.’ ”