Hit Row members Top Dolla (AJ Francis) and Ashante Adonis (Tehuti Miles) appeared on Saturday’s episode of Busted Open Radio and spoke about being released by WWE on Thursday. Francis and Miles were two of the eight names cut in this round of releases and spoke about what their mindset was about the situation.
Francis: “To be honest — we know that we are talented and we know that us being released is just a [situation] of circumstance. There’s not really much more we could have done to prove that we belonged. When I get released and WWE Hall Of Famers are the first people that reached out to me and said, ‘Man, I don’t know what [WWE is] doing…’ then I know that I did something right.”
Miles: “I agree. I talked to a lot of people, WWE Hall Of Famers reached out to me as well, a lot of people in WWE reached out to me. My mood, I mean, I’m doing good. Still shocked and stuff, but I’m doing good. I feel like I have a really good mindset about everything and I’m just ready to start the next chapter.”
Asked how the releases happened, Miles first said that Hit Row had their booking plans change a few times on Thursday, the same day they were released by WWE.
Miles: “Thursday morning was weird because we were booked for SmackDown, Survivor Series and RAW and then we were unbooked, and they booked us again and then we were unbooked. So I’m like [thinking] OK, this is what goes on in WWE, there’s a lot of things to figure out. So I thought maybe they’ll have something for us and we’ll fly out Saturday or something like that. But I remember watching Thursday night football and I missed the call from John Laurinaitis. I called him back, he told me budget cuts and stuff like that, and I just told him thank you. It is what it is.”
Busted Open co-host Mark Henry said there’s definitely more to it, noting that he could hear the frustration in Miles’ voice. Henry said he shouldn’t downplay it and there’s nothing wrong with feeling that way.
Francis then said they just went to WWE headquarters and had meetings about getting action figures and would be DLC in the new WWE 2K video game, then said “everything got pulled out from underneath us.”
Francis: “When we got taken off of this weekend, I knew then that we were about to be released. I didn’t contact anybody or tell anybody, because that’s the same thing that happened to Brianna [B-Fab]. When Brianna got released, we were all booked to do a Black Friday commercial together, which we ended up shooting without her and they’re not able to use it this Friday anymore, but we were all booked to do the commercial and then she got unbooked, and we didn’t understand why. [We] then found out that she was released, so once—we were booked for Friday and we weren’t booked for Survivor Series or RAW yet, so then they unbooked us Thursday morning for SmackDown and then said we’re still needed for Survivor Series and RAW, and then they were like ‘we don’t need you for Survivor Series and RAW.’ As soon as I saw that, I knew it was going to go off.
“It’s sad because I thought that we showed that we had a lot to offer, and not to mention the fact that I never got to show what I could do in the ring. I was doing — I think my biggest downfall from my time in WWE was that I spent the first year-and-a-half with people pretending I didn’t know how to work because they didn’t give me a chance to. Once they gave us chances in the ring, they would give us two-minute squash matches, three-minute squash matches. We had one match that went longer than ten minutes and it was the main event with Legado del Fantasma, and it was an incredible match. We did the three-man move, I was working 20, 30-minute main event matches on the indies before I got to WWE, and then I got to WWE and they’re like, ‘We need to see what you can do.’ I just always thought it was funny, they didn’t do it with other people. With other people, they’d be like, ‘Oh here, here’s twenty minutes. Go have a match.’ They would tell us, ‘Oh you guys just need more seasoning in the ring’ but then they wouldn’t give us matches. How are we supposed to do that?”
Francis and Miles then talked about the work they did put into their craft, noting how they wrote promos and filmed some content. WWE officials asked the group to write several promos prior to making their official debut. Francis says they filmed and wrote promos so WWE could see what they were doing as a preview, since it might translate differently on television. Officials praised them for their dedication and work ethic and then it “was all for naught and just wild to me.”
Asked if they ever felt that there was any heat on Hit Row, Francis said WWE got mad that he called the office and asked why they released B-Fab. He says he told them B-Fab made them unique and that removing her made them just like any other three-man group. Francis also said they wanted to remix the song without B-Fab, so they [Hit Row] re-recorded it, which upset the company as well.
Francis: “We went in the studio and made a new song. I guess they were upset that we made a new song, but we’re a rap group, so it’s like, how are we a rap group if we can’t make a song? Then we’re just wrestlers.”
FRAN¢Style 131
“Thank You // 89 Days”
#TheCrew ?? pic.twitter.com/9Vk3oebkit— Top Dolla ?? (@AJFrancis410) November 19, 2021
AJ Francis also went into detail about the perception that his recent “diss track” on Jinder Mahal led to being fired. Francis explained that it wasn’t the case at all, and Jinder even helped him plan the whole thing out because it was meant to help build the feud with each other.
Francis: “People want to bring up the fact about the song I released for Jinder and Shanky on Twitter, that people got mad about. But Jinder Mahal himself not only loved the song, but said — and I have proof of it — that I said nothing wrong in the song. This is Jinder saying it. The whole point of it was the fact that we were in a feud together and we were trying to get more juice in the feud. Me and Jinder are cool, that was the whole point of it. When people are like ‘Oh the best he used was insensitive’ — the beat that I used is called ‘Beware’ by Punjabi MC, the most famous Indian sample in hip-hop. And when I picked the beat, Jinder Mahal was sitting next to me in the locker room when we formulated the plan to do this. So, it’s like, for people to be upset with me and think that’s the reason we got fired is ridiculous because even Jinder himself went and talked them and was like, ‘No, it’s not like this. We planned this together.’”
Miles added that he mostly keeps to himself, a contrast to who he is on television, so he doesn’t understand how he would have heat with anyone. Francis says everyone wants to try and treat you like a little kid in the wrestling business, then spoke about how he actively tried to be a little more passive in his behavior. Francis said as a Black man in America, Henry knew exactly what he meant, and guessed he would have been fired two years ago if he actually showed his frustration and anger in some of the situations he’d been put in.
On Friday, Francis alluded to some difficult situations he’d been put in, then told Busted Open about a situation where he was prepping for a segment on SmackDown and noticed the audio was too high. He says he politely asked to turn it down, and while he didn’t directly hear the response, something rude was said on the headsets. He says it was bad enough that three other producers came up to him and apologized for what was said, despite never hearing it himself. Francis pointed out that if he would have heard that and replied, he would have been labeled as disgruntled and aggressive and the “angry Black guy.”
Francis: “It’s unfortunate the way things shape out, but at the end of the day, I’m not telling nobody to not watch WWE again. I’m going to watch WWE, I’m not pretending I’m not, I watch everything, but also, that’s not the end-all, be-all. That’s not where we have to be to be successful. We are more than capable of going anywhere in this world and making the same impact.”
Read More: Updated List Of WWE Talent Releases On November 18
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