TNA's Nic Nemeth spoke to Chris Van Vliet this week and one of the topics he discussed was his exit from WWE, where he wrestled as Dolph Ziggler. Nemeth revealed that
On his WWE exit
Yeah, signing my last deal for an astronomical amount of money just to keep me there was cool, but I said I don't see myself staying for the full thing. I don't see you guys paying me for the full three years of this, because what I'm doing right now is basically break glass in case of a pay-per-view match, or somebody needs an opponent for something, and that's okay. But it really was a lot of money, and I was ready to leave, and I go, I'm not gonna stay for the full time, because I only have a certain amount of years to be looked at as a top guy, World Champion at any company, and if I stay for three full more years, it's gonna be like another year after that, and then who knows how this works out. So with the full intention of either some mutual agreement here, or me getting out year and a half or two to go see what I can do and prove to myself. I'm like, Oh, I was in this bubble for 20 years. I know all the people who come in and out, and it's a rotating cast, but for the core people in there, I knew them. I knew them really well. I knew what I was capable of and what I could do. But I go, I've talked all this sh*t for 15 of those 20 years. I need to go do it outside of this bubble, and it's for me, but also to let some people know I know you're doing three-minute matches with no entrance at the moment, but we forgot that every pay-per-view you're on, you stole the show whether you wanted to or didn't want to. And I go, I need to prove this to myself that I could be a World Champion at any company in the world, just because this one decided I'm not on that list, I can show everybody else still. I need to prove to myself, and I really wasn't sure. I'm gonna go to Japan, I'm gonna go to TNA, I'm gonna go to independents, I'm gonna go to Mexico. I want to see if, without people going, 'Hey, great job, great job,' just because I was there, I needed to know when I got out of there, okay, I can still go, because I hadn't been tested in a couple of years. Because it was a lot of times like, Hey, you have an eight-minute match. But we know the deal. A lot of it was myself and Robert Roode just out there with Street Profits or somebody, and a lot of those eight-minute matches became four-minute matches by the time it got to us. And then do you want it down to two and a half, or do you want to cut your entrance? Cut out our entrance, so we can give them a wrestling match, and you're seeing two minutes of guys just doing moves, and that's okay for a TV show sometimes at that point, but it wasn't the best use of us, and it wasn't the best use of me being there to do it. So I wrote a really, really long email to Vince, Hunter, Bruce, Ed, and maybe one other person, and it was a compliment sandwich. 'This is the greatest thing ever. I'm the luckiest guy in the world. I will never not say that you're using me, or a role that a local would be in, but you're paying me as the WrestleMania main eventer, this is bad for you, and this is bad for me.' At this point, because of the timing of the company about to be purchased by someone else, that was the best bet to get out of it. Because in the past, I'm like, 'Hey, I want out.' They're like, 'Sorry, you're signed. You're not getting out of this.' Okay."
On asking Vince McMahon for his release
"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."
