Swerve Strickland Says ‘Political Moves’ Hindered His Success in WWE – Swerve Strickland commented on his WWE run during a recent appearance on The Rich Eisen Show.
Strickland was with WWE as Isaiah “Swerve” Scott from April 2019 until his release in November 2021. When asked why things didn’t work out for him in the company, Strickland would only say that it was “political.”
“Political moves. Just political moves, I can say,” Swerve responded. “I’ll just leave it at ‘political moves.’”
Strickland debuted in AEW at Revolution on March 6, 2022. He was asked what he expected when he signed with the company.
“Opportunity and time,” he responded.
“I worked my way up from the bottom, I don’t care. You can put me in battle royals, I’ll lose them all, I don’t care. Just give me the opportunity to show out.”
“Give me the opportunity like ‘Hey, can I get a minute of TV time right here in this spot?’ ‘Absolutely’ ‘Okay, I’m going to make something matter.’ That’s something that you just can’t ask for anywhere else. You can’t just ask for a minute and get it, that’s really tough. I don’t care if it’s Dynamite, Rampage or Collision or Ring of Honor, getting television time forwarded to you is valuable. It’s up to you what you do with it.”
“It’s about opportunity because there’s a lot of people out there I know that are very, very talented that would dream of getting a minute’s worth of television opportunity.”
Strickland continued to say that when he arrived at AEW, he also had to build a relationship with Tony Khan and learn about what he wanted on his wrestling shows.
“It was also a relationship that I had to build with Tony and All Elite Wrestling. It wasn’t always about me and what I wanted, and I had to learn that too. Through my tenure at AEW, I had to learn like ‘What is it that Tony needs? What can I provide that Tony needs right now?”
Strickland’s run with the AEW World Championship ended on Sunday at All In after 126 days. He won the title from Samoa Joe at AEW Dynasty in April and defended it successfully against Will Ospreay, Roderick Strong, Christian Cage and Claudio Castagnoli during his reign.
The full 42-minute interview with Swerve Strickland is available below.
Swerve Strickland Says ‘Political Moves’ Hindered His Success in WWE
