Scotty 2 Hotty Explains His Decision To Leave WWE, What Motivated His In-Ring Return

Scotty 2 Hotty is ready to deliver. 

Scotty 2 Hotty (Scott Garland) recently appeared on Insight with Chris Van Vliet and spoke about his decision to leave WWE and resume his in-ring career on the independent scene. Scotty said that he never considered himself retired, but said that he didn’t enjoy his job as a coach at the WWE Performance Center anymore and wanted to get back to having fun.

“What a crazy time in my life. It’s like I’m taking this crazy step and a lot of people are like ‘Oh this guy…’ and I’m 48 years old, I’m going back into the ring, but if I didn’t feel like I could deliver, I wouldn’t do it. It just felt like the perfect time to do it,” Scotty explained. “I miss being in the ring. I never said I was retired. I took the job as a coach in WWE at the Performance Center back in 2016. I had my last match in August of [2016] and that was it. I never said I was retired, but I also never saw myself as time went on — here we are five years later, almost six years later — I never saw myself really having another match again and I was OK with that, honestly. I did everything and I looked back at some of that Attitude Era stuff on video and it’s crazier than I even remembered. So I said, ‘You know what? Nobody can ever take that away from me.’

“My career peaked at the peak of professional wrestling, such a cool time and such a cool energy with such cool characters, and I felt like I did everything I ever wanted to do. I missed the traveling, NXT wasn’t doing any live events at all, we weren’t traveling, all the TV was shot in-house. I wasn’t having fun anymore there and I saw people outside — from AEW, all the way down to small independents, having fun, and the independents are on fire right now. So I started asking around, you know, ‘What do you think I could make?’ and I was doing the numbers, and I said I think I could go out there and kill it. There are very few guys from the Attitude Era who are still going. Al Snow, The Headbangers, Billy Gunn, Val Venis does a little bit, Godfather does a little bit,” he explained, “but there’s very few that are going [in the ring.] So I said I could still deliver, I’m excited.”

Scotty said he made his decision to leave WWE in the last few months, noting that all of the company’s recent talent releases started taking a toll on him personally as a coach. Scotty noted that he never knew how much he would love being a coach and he formed relationships with the talent, and then he was learning about those people getting cut on social media.

“Here you are, you built this relationship for years and you’re their coach. I had my buddy from Nashville, who’s not even in the wrestling business text me and go, ‘Hey, releases are happening again…’ So here I have to jump on Twitter and there’s somebody that’s in my class that I was sitting with three hours before,” Scotty noted, “and that’s how I’m finding out and I’m like, ‘Man, this isn’t cool.’”

Scotty confirmed he found out about talent cuts at the same time everyone else did, noting how WWE started sending a group text to notify people about talent changes. He said that was also an issue he had with the company, expressing that he never wanted to know that someone got fired before the talent themselves did. He said there’s been some confusion in the past where talent would thank him and the other coaches for their work and he’d think it was for what they learned in class, but it was actually because they were saying goodbye after being let go.

Scotty said that in addition to these issues, he just wasn’t having fun anymore and wanted to go out on the road and enjoy himself again. He noted that his release was granted rather easily and that while WWE might have thought he was headed to AEW, he had no solid plans other than to see what he could do on the independents.

Scotty 2 Hotty made his in-ring return against Joey Janela at GCW’s Die 4 This on New Year’s Day. His next match will take place at ISPW’s GrandSLAM event on Friday, February 18th in Butler, NJ. Scotty will challenge “The Superstar” Danny Morrison (formerly ECW’s Danny Doring) for the ISPW World Heavyweight Title. Maven and New York Mets manager Bobby Valentine are also advertised to appear at the same event; read more about the ISPW show at this link.

Read More: Scotty 2 Hotty Comments On In-Ring Return, Thanks Joey Janela

If you use this transcript, credit Insight with Chris Van Vliet and h/t WrestleZone and link back to this post.