Brodie Lee Recalls His Final Few Months In WWE & The Process Of Getting Released
August 2, 2021 | News | No Comments
Brodie Lee was a recent guest on Talk Is Jericho where he broke down his final few months as a WWE Superstar and his attempts to get released.
Brodie discussed waiting outside of Vince McMahon’s office for three hours, with that being the final straw for him and his career.
“One of my last, the one that was like ‘fuck this place,’ I sat outside Vince’s office — I had been off for so long [after the Bludgeon Brothers broke up]— I sat outside his office for three hours. Everyone leaves and Michael Hayes walks out and is like, ‘I’m the last one.’ I knock on the door and he goes, ‘I don’t want to see anybody right now.’ I’m like, ‘mother….’ [He didn’t know I was out there]. I’m going to leave, I threw my pitches in the garbage. Shawn Spears goes, ‘he’s in his other office.’ Before I left, I gave him one final pitch, he’s eating salad, and he’s like ‘I’ll look at these on the plane.’ I knew that was it,” he recalled.
Brodie then discussed getting Vince’s phone number as he made another push to save his WWE career prior to WWE WrestleMania 35.
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“Then I remember, somebody gave me his number. What did I have to lose? I texted him, ‘Hey man, just wondering what’s going on with my career?’ This was right before WrestleMania 35. He asked me, ‘Why aren’t you in the Andre battle royal?’ I said, ‘Sir, that’s a question that you should probably be able to answer.’ I have nothing to lose. He goes, ‘Well you are now.’ That week in the meetings, he had chastised some of the writers like, ‘How do we leave this guy off and him not have anything? Let’s come up with something for him.’ Oh. It worked. We got a sheet and I was one of the last two or three. When we got there, they have kayfabed us on the end of the battle royal and there were like ten other people after me. Demoralized again, but no problem.”
After another planned storyline for Brodie didn’t end up happening, he finally made the decision to quit and get out of the company.
“Then, I was going to be Sami Zayn’s heater,” began Lee. “I go, ‘Fuck, man. That’s exactly what I don’t want to do.’ That’s what I’ve done my entire career. I don’t want to be behind anybody, I want to do my own thing. I said, ‘I’m gonna make it work.’ I was supposed to debut on SmackDown after Mania and it got canceled. I said, ‘Okay, that’s it.’ I went home, talked to my wife and she goes, ‘If you don’t want to be there, don’t be there. Ask them for your release.’ I did and I remember Vince called me and we had two, 20-minute conversations and we just talked like humans. Vince is very almost robot-like, but when you talk to him, he’s a good person. He’s like, ‘What do you want, do you want more money? Do you want a push?’ I’m like, ‘No, at this point, I don’t want either of that.’ I also didn’t realize that other people had asked for their releases, but not publicly. Hunter had told me later, he goes, ‘We can’t release you, it’s gonna make it look like people are jumping off the sinking ship.’
He continued, “I never said anything negative about them online. I wanted to do it publicly because I knew the court of public opinion was very important to the next move I was going to make. To have the support was important. I also didn’t want them to be able to control my narrative. Now, if they sit me at home, people know that I wanted out and I wasn’t just content. Spears had done the same thing a few months earlier and they granted his release. Honestly, I thought they were going to do it. After the second conversation with Vince, he called me and said, ‘for business reasons, I can’t let you go.’ I said, ‘That’s fair. It’s your decision. I signed the contract. Can I get out in November?’ because they added six months because of a wrist injury. He said, ‘That’s a question for somebody else.’ We left it at that.”
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