Dean Ambrose revelas why he left WWE at Talk is Jericho

TALK IS JERICHO PART 3

Jericho: I will say, and this is one of the reasons I left WWE in uh, May of '17, and we went on tour with Fozzy. But there's a lot of people, right after we did the Kevin Owens thing, like... "Why would you leave right now? You're, y'know, the character's so hot!" and to me, I was mentally exhausted, like you just said. Because every week I had to do the same thing that you had to do, go wait in front of his office, which takes forever. Maybe it's an hour, maybe it's 45 minutes, go in there and then you gotta put on a show for the boss and convince him why your idea is the right way to go. It burns you out, man! The match is the easy part.

Mox: Yeah, and I'll tell you, I don't, y'know, I always get irritated by the notion that comes from a lot of, a lot of, like, former wrestlers especially, or like Attitude Era type guys that, like, "Oh, the guys today they're scared, they're all scared to get fired. They're scared to stand up for themselves, they're scared to take risks, they're scared to go off script, they're scared of getting fired..." I've never been afraid of getting fired. I've never... not saying that like I'm so good or anything, I'm just saying that I've never felt like me speaking up is going to lead to me being fired. I've never had that fear.

I always go in and give my opinion, y'know? My opinion of it is, okay, I'm gonna try to convince you that my idea is better, but if I can't convince you of that by showtime, you're the guy who writes my checks and I'm not gonna just be a complainer, I'm going to try to make the best of this.

Jericho: Right, even if he doesn't go for your idea, then explain to me your idea, let me comprehend what you want me to do.

Mox: Yeah, like, alright... if I can't convince you that I shouldn't be walking to the ring eating a Cuban sandwich, then... screw it, I'm gonna go to the ring and making eating a Cuban sandwich look so cool. I'm gonna have mustard on my face and people are gonna be like "Damn, he pulled that off better than anybody else could." And I think I proved that I could do that a lot over the years.

[Jericho cuts a promo advertising Arm & Hammer Cloud Control Cat Litter]

Mox: Onto the second story, right? This is the day that I knew 100% I was gone and there was no turning back. I actually almost walked out. Not really, I'm glad I didn't because I could have ended up in some legal stuff, whatever, y'know? I knew I was gone in July but I'm thinking, like, why rush it? It's only like eight more months or whatever, from like September to April. What's eight months? And who knows, maybe everything will change? Maybe, y'know... Who knows?

So this day, Monday Night Raw takes place in Milwaukee. I wake up in the morning and I get a text from a writer, Ice Pick, my man, good guy, explaining to me what I'm going to do that day, and it says, "So you'll have a backstage where you'll be with your own personal doctor who'll be injecting you with rabies shots and all kinds of inoculations," um... however he explained it, "...to inoculate yourself against the disgusting fans."

And I replied, "I fucking hate that," and he replied, "I know." So I get to the building and I'm like... you can imagine the mood I'm in when I get to the building. Now the word just from my response has already circulated that I might not be very excited about this, so when Michael Hayes coming up to me, "How you doing, Dean? Heard you're not very... not real excited about your promo."

And I was like, "No... why? I've been talking about this for months. Why am I always doing this goofy crap? Y'know, this has been me and Vince butting heads on this since February, you know? We'll get to that later, but so they hand me this sheet and it's just... ugh, as bad as you imagine. And uh, then I got... I remember I got herded into some kinda like sexual harrassment meeting that we all had to do or whatever. So I'm just sitting in this meeting while they're talking and I'm just staring at this promo and just SEETHING.

And I'm like, as soon as this meeting is over I'm going to bolt right to Vince's office. Right? And uh so as soon as I get out of the door of the meeting the writer's already in front of me and he's like, "Hey, uh, Vince wants to talk to you about this promo, he wants to make sure you know it's not comedy." So Vince anticipated that I was gonna come storming in there and go, "Why am I doing all this prop comedy all the time?" 'Cause I've been having the same argument with him for like a year now.

So anyway, I go into Vince's office and he's like "Hey pal! So this promo, I want you to know this is not comedy." And he's got the promo in his hand and he's pointing to it, "This is such good stuff, it's so well-written, and it's gonna get you a ton of heat." That's exactly what he said-- "It's so well-written, and it's gonna get you a ton of heat." And he's explaining it to me, you know, you'll get rabies, and of course, y'know, uh, distemper, which y'know people don't know it's for dogs, and he's laughing and I'm like, thinking like, "What? How's this...?"

And I remember saying something like it's just more of this Carrot Top prop comedy and he's like "There's no props!" and I'm like, then what is the actor we hired to play the doctor and the giant syringe, is that not a prop? Y'know, so... I had the feeling in my head that this was going to be the last time I was going to say this to him, and I've had to say this to him a bunch of times.

I went, "If this is what you want on your show, I am the best man for the job. 'Cause like I always do when you throw me these crazy curve balls, I pull this stuff off. If I can. So I'm going to do like I always do and give this my absolute best effort to make this good. If anybody can, it's me." And I kinda had a feeling like, this is the last time I'm going to have to say this to him, y'know.

And he's like "Ah, I know you will, get outta here ya scamp, get to work!" So we go do the thing, it's awful, y'know. I can't save it, y'know, and uh, we were able to pretape that and uh, before the show. And it got greenlit by Vince, y'know, everybody's high-fiving, "Vince loved it!" and I'm like [flat affect] "Great." So I was able to get out-- I got a Southwest flight, and I was able to get out that night.

I couldn't have gotten out of that building any faster. I mean, I... earlier in the day I had been like thinking, "I gotta walk out." I remember having a feeling of, like, dizziness. Like a weird pit of my stomach feeling dizziness, and talking to some of my friends like, "I can't work here. What is this? What are we doing? What? Are they trying... it's so embarrassing." Like actual dizziness, you know what I mean, like I can't believe what's happening, y'know?

So like, I bolt out of there, I go to the airport and I was just like... I just sat down at the bar at the airport and was just like... so depressed. Just like... 'cause I was like that might be the thing. 'Cause I always kept waiting to like, when would be the thing that I couldn't recover from? 'Cause you know, you do have some stupid segment where everybody's like, "What is that, catsup and mustard? What's he doing, why is...", or whatever, but then I can recover.

I was always able to recover, I remember sitting there and thinking like, that might be the one I just can't recover from. AND, remember what I was saying about the line in the uh, previous promo, the week or so before? This promo also had a line regarding my actual friend who's going through actual leukemia, that Vince wanted me to say. That he tried to talk me into saying.

This is where I said, where I absolutely drew the line. I was like, absolutely not, no. And he actually tried to talk me into it a little bit, but I... I was like, absolutely not. And he was like "Well, if you feel uncomfortable, that's fine," y'know I'm like... no. That's where I had to finally put my foot down.

Jericho: This is another cancer reference to Roman?

Mox: Yeah. And it's... it is the worst line. You cannot... I'm not gonna say it on air, I'll tell you after we're done, but I'm not even gonna say it on air, that's how bad it was. It would have been like, a thing where like somebody would have had to get fired. Maybe even me! They would have lost sponsors, like the Susan G. Komen and all that, it would have been like...

And I don't know who wrote it, I dunno if it was Vince himself or if it was a writer and you're listening right now, you should be ashamed of yourself. You, like... You wouldn't believe it. But if I had just said it, if I had just been like "Okay!" and just read the script, I can't imagine, y'know? But it would have been on me, not on Vince, y'know? Uh... anyway, so that's that day.

Those are just two examples of a day in the life of me.