Thanks to Chris Van Vliet of WSVN-TV Miami for sending this in!
Hey Rajah,
Hope you're recovering after WrestleMania! I wanted to let you know about the very interesting interview that I just did with Dolph Ziggler . We covered some big topics including his current contract situation and how he was unhappy with his last US Title run.
On the rumors he re-signed with WWE for $1.5 million:
"My father called me to congratulate me on my deal that I had re-signed and I said 'What are you talking about?' It's fun to have Internet rumors out there, but even if and when I do re-sign I won't be like 'Hey everybody, here's the details of this contract'. There's a short amount of time left on this contract, we're negotiating and we'll see what happens."
Not being happy with his last US Title run:
"I'm going to guess that some plans that were made originally didn't happen. I asked to go away for a while just to let them forget that I wasn't doing anything of too much importance. I asked for some time off. I got kicked in the head by Jack Swagger and got a concussion when I was the champ and I was out for 2 weeks and that's basically all the time off I've had. Even my stand up dates are booked around when I'm not working here. So if I'm never gone, no one can hope for me to come back. One other time I was gone for 5 weeks to film a movie. That was it. I never went away, I never had a surgery and I don't want to but you can't be missed if you are never gone and you are always here. So I asked to go away for 6 months or a year and was told no, but maybe a couple of months. Out of nowhere in this title match, I won the match. It was really fun, it was really crazy. Corbin and Roode are really fun to wrestle. I won it and I went 'Alright, what am I going to do now?' and I figured I would have a moment and have everyone talking about me one way or another, so I threw down the title and walked out. I thought it was great and then 3 TV's later I was back."
Returning at the Royal Rumble only be eliminated almost immediately:
"I only lasted about 90 seconds and that was so disappointing to me for everything I had done in the last couple weeks and months."
How different his career might have been if NXT was around when he debuted:
"If I came from NXT maybe I'd go right into something important. You're built up in this brand as a star before you get here and that's so cool the way they do that. I came in as a guy who was shaking hands that people were laughing at and I think I beat R Truth by count out and that was my debut. It's one thing to have Shawn Michaels and Triple H in NXT molding the stars of the future and that is amazing. I'm very lucky I had Rip Rodgers teaching me how to wrestle from 4 people to 4 million people to see it. The shape that they have it now it's almost like the vignettes are build into the system because they have this amazing NXT program and when you're pieces of the puzzle already, you're that much more important when you get here and you go right to the top and right to something important and maybe that's what I would have been lacking by just showing up and kind of being around."