Seth Rollins says he nearly ended up in TNA
“I also get a call from, I wanna say it was D-Lo Brown was the first guy from TNA, he was producing TNA at the time and he knew my ROH contract was coming up. I think he was the first one to reach out to me and ask me if I’d be interested in going to TNA. And I was like, ‘Well yeah, I’m interested in making more money and moving up, so, absolutely.’ He’s like, ‘Alright, well if you don’t mind, I’ll put you in touch with Terry Taylor, who was doing all the hiring and the firing in TNA at the time. And so Terry calls me, and basically tells me he wants to offer me a three year deal to come to TNA for substantially more money, and far less dates than what I was having to do in Ring of Honor, and a much easier style. And so I was like, ‘Oh, this sounds fantastic. This is great.’ Mind you, I hadn’t heard back from Johnny Ace yet. He hadn’t called me, I couldn’t get a hold of him, nothing. I get this contract from TNA and I basically agree to it verbally with Terry Taylor on the phone. I say, ‘Oh yeah, it all looks great.’ They fax over the contract. Before I sign the contract, I call Ring of Honor and let them know what I’m interested in doing with TNA. At the time, ROH is being booked by Jim Cornette. I don’t know if you guys have any experience with ‘ol Jimmy Cornette, but he’s quite the trip and he lost his mind when I told him I was going to sign with TNA! There are so many expletives in the conversation that followed that I can’t even repeat half of it. He was so irate,,, Cornette says, ‘You know what? Just let me make sure they’re doing you right. Send that contract over to me, send it to me before you sign it and send it back. I’m like, ‘Sh– Jim, alright, I’m just trying to make a buck, dawg. Sorry,’ ya know? So I send him my contract, meanwhile, he’s looking it over, and I’m like, you know what? I’m gonna call Johnny Ace one last time just to let him know don’t worry about it. So I call him up, doesn’t answer. I leave him one more voice mail and I tell him, ‘Look, I got this contract with TNA and if I don’t hear from ya, I’m probably gonna sign it and end up going there’. No joke, ten minutes later he calls me back. First time he calls me back in months. And he goes, ‘Hi kid, uh, I just got your messages, sorry I’ve been so busy.’ And he makes up all these excuses and stuff like that. Then he’s like, ‘Ah, you know what, I gotta talk to some people tomorrow but I’ll give you a call. If you don’t mind, I’ll give you a call probably around lunch time tomorrow if that’s okay.’ And I’m like, ‘Ah crap.’ So I hang up with him, Cornette gives the contract back to me, he changed a couple little things in it. So then in the morning, I’m trying to get the new contract back to Terry Taylor so they can re-write it and send it back to me, so they do all of that. And now I’m waiting on this call from John Laurinaitis at lunch, and Laurinaitis finally calls me back. Meanwhile, Terry’s trying to force me to sign this contract and I’m no-selling him on the back end of this, like, not trying to answer his calls. Finally, Laurinaitis calls me back and he gives me the old, ‘Ah, kid, you know we don’t give out jobs, we give out opportunities. So we got an opportunity for you down in Florida, if you’re interested, it’s just a developmental deal. There’s no guarantees. We’ll talk about pay and stuff like that.’ And I’m like, immediately, I mean, it’s where I always wanted to be. I didn’t give a damn – I didn’t if it was a job opportunity, I didn’t care what it was, I just did not care. I’m in! I’m done.”
