Hit Row Members Open Up About The Group's Turbulent WWE Tenure
Two 4ths of Hit Row have shared some insight into the events that led up to them being released from their WWE contracts earlier this week.
In case you missed it, WWE released Drake Maverick, Shane Thorne, Tegan Nox, Jaxson Ryker, John Morrison, and all three remaining members of Hit Row on Thursday, November 18. The fourth member of Hit Row, B-Fab, was released a few weeks earlier. According to Fightful's Sean Ross Sapp, WWE Head of Talent Relations John Laurinaitis informed the eight talents that they were being released due to budget cuts (although as we reported, WWE generated $256 Million in revenue this quarter).
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Top Dolla (AJ Francis) and Ashante “Thee” Adonis (Tehuti Miles) addressed their brief but chaotic main roster tenure during a recent chat with the hosts of Busted Open Radio.
“Thursday morning was a little weird because we were booked for SmackDown, Survivor Series and RAW and then we were unbooked,” Adonis said of his final moments as a member of WWE's roster. “They booked us again and then we were unbooked. So, I’m like, ‘Okay, this is what goes on in WWE, there’s a lot of things to figure out.’ I was like, ‘Oh, okay, 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 was like, ‘thank you.’ It is what it is.”
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Top Dolla detailed the big plans that WWE had for the Hit Row, which included action figures and their character models being featured in the upcoming WWE video game.
“We just went to [WWE] HQ, met everybody, and talked to everybody,” Dolla said. “Talked about how we’re going to get action figures and talked about how we were going to be big deal, and seeing the [WWE 2K22] video game. All these different things and everything got pulled out from underneath us.”
Hit Row was called up to WWE's main roster from NXT during the recent 2021 WWE draft. The group made its main roster debut on the October 22 edition of SmackDown.
