Mike Kanellis has expressed his interest in moving on from WWE, but he also understands the reasoning as to why he hasn’t been released yet.
Kanellis was interviewed on the “Smarks & Stripes” podcast that is hosted by Bill Matz and former WWE official Kevin Keenan and goes on to say how thankful he is for how WWE has helped him in building his life both in and out of the ring, but he also states how much he wants to work to earn a paycheck, something he hasn’t had the benefit of doing since re-signing with the company.
“Since the minute I got to WWE, they treated me great, they treated my wife great, they treated my daughter great. When I came out and said that I had an addiction, there was no negativity from anybody, just constant support, and so, for me personally, having been almost two-and-a-half years sober, it got to the point when I started reflecting on my past and what I did and it became very hard for me to almost sit and reflect on the fact that I blew four years of my life doing drugs, and now I felt like my mind was clear, my head is clear, and I just wanted to work, I just want to wrestle. I feel like I could do and have my best matches right now and it’s extremely difficult when there’s so many people on the roster and you just don’t get that opportunity and like I said, everybody wants to come at me and come at me negatively and say that I’m mad. I’m not mad at anybody. I’m genuinely not. If WWE called me tomorrow and was like, ‘We’re gonna put you on TV’, I’d do it. I’m not mad. I just want to work, and I just want to work a lot. I want to be able to go home and tell my daughter that, ‘Daddy put in the time. Daddy put in the effort.’ It’s incredibly difficult for me to go on social media and preach that you have to work hard, you have to work your ass off and then not do it myself, and so, I’m a worker. I’ve always been a worker and now I’m kind of at the point where I just want to work and work and work and I’ll go wherever that opportunity exists.”
Kanellis has yet to be granted his release from WWE and uses the comparison of the New England Patriots trading a player to their in-division rival the New York Jets:
“As far as not giving me my release, I think it’s like anywhere — the Patriots aren’t going to trade or release a player that they think that the Jets are going to pick up, and I think we have to think of it like that. It’s not a negative, that’s just how it works. It works in sports, it works in wrestling.”
(h/t to Andrew Thompson of POST Wrestling for transcription)
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