Simon Gotch on Leaving WWE and the Backstage Environment

I wonder if it was like this in the Vaudeville days. When a wrestler leaves a company, it’s hard to guess how they’re going to react. Some of them will throw the company underneath the bus and blame them for the lack of success while others will calmly saying thank you for the chance and move on. Now we have another subject to check on.

Simon Gotch left WWE earlier this year and has moved on to the independent circuit. His release seemed to come out of nowhere and it wasn’t clear why he left in the first place. Now Gotch has been interviewed by Wrestlelist.com about his departure and a host of other topics. Here are some highlights:

On Why he Left WWE

I was really unhappy. I’d actually been pretty unhappy there for a while. It’s kind of an odd little side story – the previous year, right after the takeover they did in Dallas, which myself and my former tag team partner Aiden English weren’t even on the live special from Dallas. And I’d always been really close with Biff Busick or Oney Lorcan as he’s now known, and he walked by and said “Hey man, how are you doing,” and I just looked at him and said “I fucking hate this place. I want to quit,” and he got this huge grin on his face. If you’ve ever seen Biff smile you know he’s got this very unique sort of half smile does, but it was that thing of really, frustration building up and being really depressed about how we were being used. And you always want to be doing more and when you’re feeling like you’re not being allowed to you’re literally being barred from doing more, it can wear on you a lot.

On the WWE Working Environment

The one plus of NXT versus the main roster was in NXT they did the tapings every month or every couple of months. It was kind of like you knew where you were going or weren’t going. If you’re not used on a taping you know you’re not going to do anything for the next six weeks or month. So then you have time to work on stuff on house shows or put together ideas, new pitches – you know whether or not you need to do that. But, on the main roster, because everything’s so day-to-day and week-to-week, there’s very much that feeling of, am I doing anything on TV this week? No? Okay – let me pitch an angle. And next week comes and they tell me they like the angle but they don’t have time to start it yet. And another week goes by and they don’t do anything.

And on a Potential Return

I wouldn’t say the door is closed obviously because in wrestling if it’s going to make them money, they’re not going to care about anything else. Serena Deeb was actually just back in the Mae Young Classic and I’m pretty sure everyone thought she was blackballed after she got released and I must have heard she’d retired a couple of years ago. So she’s an example of someone who a lot of people would’ve thought would never be back. Mickie James, Alundra Blayze, Drew McIntyre is probably one that people thought would never come back or Jinder Mahal. For me personally, I think it’s a matter of – I would need to come back under the right circumstances. I wasn’t happy with how I was used when I was there. I wouldn’t want to come back to basically fall into that same trap again.

Here’s the full interview:

Simon Grimm on WWE making him unhappy

Opinion: I don’t know how things work backstage at WWE but it’s fascinating to see how some people react positively to their departures and others seem to let out these angry emotions. Gotch never had the greatest success in the promotion and while that might be on him, maybe it’s on WWE as well. Either way, he’s not the biggest loss to the company and there’s not much of a way around that.

Did you like Gotch’s time in WWE? Where do you see him winding up? Let us know in the comments below.