Donovan Dijak talks posting his announcement letter to social media.
In late June, Dijak took to social media and posted a photo of a letter revealing that he would be a free agent in matter of days, as his contract with WWE was expiring. This post lit up social media, as many fans were excited to see Dijak hit the independent scene again.
In a recent interview with Chris Van Vliet, Dijak talked about his decision to upload a photo of the letter to social media.
“So I wanted, just in terms of my mental approach to it, I gave a lot of thought to what I wanted to do and how I wanted to approach this. Because I was in a very unique situation, I can’t think of anyone else who was in a situation like that, because it’s only recently that they really started letting contracts expire. From what I can tell everyone who had that situation was notified decently well in advance, like maybe a month or two out. So I don’t know that there’s a lot of situations where it was such a short window of time before the notification happened.”
Dijak went on to talk about the logistics behind his final match in the company, which was on an episode of WWE Speed. Then, Dijak dove deep and speculated why his contract wasn’t renewed.
"Well, I mean, I was on WWE Speed and that aired I think 10 days after we taped it. By the time that aired, I had already been notified. So I was on WWE programming knowing that I was not going to be with this company anymore, or at least having been told that. It wasn't set in stone, there was the possibility that it was a negotiation tactic, there was a lot of things on the table. But that tweet, because I assume they have some sort of deal with Twitter in some capacity, or some sort of payment and Hunter tweets about it every week and mentions it. So he's tweeting about me, the tweet is on there, it's posted to the top of @WWE on Twitter, and it stays there until the next week. So I was the pinned tweet on Twitter under WWE one day before I posted that. It’s Speed, but at the same time, I think 2.5 million people saw that post, so that's a relevant match in the WWE umbrella. Then almost immediately you're getting this information from me that's like, they're not interested in me anymore. They didn't even make an offer. So I knew that I had those options and frankly, lots of people were telling me to take a different approach mentally. It was suggested to me that I take a more classical approach, people have done this before and who knows what the situation is. But the standard approach is thank you for everything I had a great time at WWE. I'm appreciative of everyone, we just couldn't agree on a new deal and I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna make a name for myself and I'm excited for what's next. You keep it vague, you say we couldn't come to terms, it makes you seem like they offered you, but you feel like you're worth more, and you're gonna go prove yourself, whatever. So I had that option on the table, and that maybe there's a chance that another company sees that and they go, oh he's worth X amount of dollars or whatever, it becomes a negotiating thing. My opinion was there was more value, maybe not monetary value, but there was more intrinsic value with the fans and with trust and just how I felt personally about everything in telling the complete and entire truth. Because I don't feel like the people who support me support me just for no reason. I feel like there's a large group of my fan base that loves how blunt and honest I am, and maybe that's what gets me in trouble. Maybe the blunt honesty is what rubbed the right people the wrong way. [But it got you over on Twitter] Yeah, and I've talked before about the conversation that I had with CM Punk and it was influential to me. I could see my support trending in a better direction after that, once people started to see the real me and started to feel my honesty and feel my upfrontness and things like that. Maybe my career suffered? I don't know, it's hard to say, because I don't have an explanation. I was not told what happened in any capacity. So I can't say, oh, I should have done that, I shouldn't have done that. Because I just don't know."
Elsewhere in the interview, Dijak stated that Retribution might have been a better act in front of fans. Learn more about those comments here.
Furthermore, check out Fightful’s recent interview with Dijak by clicking here.
Special thanks to Chris Van Vliet for the quote(s).
