Jack Swagger Isn’t Surprised People Are Trying to Leave WWE
The current crop of WWE stars trying to walk away isn’t a surprise to Jack Swagger. Swagger appeared on Pro Wrestling 24/7 promoting his fight at Bellator 221 and discussed WWE’s current talent problems and more. Highlights are below:
On the things he had to do to show respect to the locker room: “Well when I got there, when I debuted in 2008 you still had guys like Undertaker, you still had guys like Mick Foley, Edge. True veterans from a past generation that learned the sport a different way. So I almost feel like the guys that I debuted with, the Dolph Zigglers, Wade Barretts, the Eddie Colons, we were like the last generation of WWE Superstars coming from developmental, but still had that old-school generation ‘show respect’-type thing installed and that’s how it worked. And there were a lot of problems if you had problems with those guys. But as my career continued and those guys were kind of phased off for most of the year — but you know, sporadically they would come back — it was a younger generation running the locker room. And you saw — I saw anyway — less politics with the boys and I saw more of the Superstars understanding the situation. ‘Hey, tonight the storyline is about this guy. Let’s do what we can to help him and make the best segments we can,’ and not a lot of animosity and not a lot of politics, people trying to put their thumbs on other people’s careers [like] John Cena. And [they] really wanted to help and make the best product possible and I really appreciated that. I worked better in that environment where we’re all there, we’re equals and we’re trying to make the best product possible.”
On if he’s surprised to hear about others trying to leave WWE: “No it’s not a shock, they know exactly how they treat their talent. They know the contracts that they have us sign and they know exactly why we’re unhappy with the way they treat us. So it’s not a shock to me. I’m very thankful looking back on it now that I was able to leave when I did. I’m very thankful for my 12 years there because it allowed me to do so much. It allows me to do so much now because of that background, that notch on my resume that I have. But at the same time there’s a lot of unhappy people there and it’s not just because of the politics. It’s because you’re traveling 200 days a year, sometimes you’re only home thirty-six hours a week, away from your family. And then you go out there and you have these storylines that are just bad and you’re like, ‘I’m putting my body through this for this?’ It would be a lot easier if the Superstars up there didn’t care and they just did what they were told, but unfortunately you can’t do a job like that. You have to care, you have to wear your heart on your sleeve in that ring and you have to care about what you are doing. And so it doesn’t surprise me at all that people are leaving because it is a problem they need to address.”
