AJ Francis says he will not call Vince McMahon an asshole in an effort to validate your opinion of him.
AJ Francis and the rest of Hit Row were on the WWE main roster for less than two months. In all his time with WWE, AJ says he has had three total actual conversations with Vince McMahon.
Speaking to Sean Ross Sapp, AJ spoke about his interactions with Vince McMahon and how he will not validate any outside opinions of Vince by bashing him when he has no reason to.
"The funny thing is people, especially when I’ve been doing these interviews since we’ve “been released, people always want me to bury Vince,” he explained. “They’re always like, ‘Vince was a dickhead, wasn’t he? Vince was a piece of shit, wasn’t he? That’s what he was.’ I’m like, ‘I talked to Vince three times ever and all three times were pleasant conversations. So if you want me to tell you that he was an asshole for your own self-opinion then that’s on you.’ I’m sure he’s done some asshole things in his life. So have I. So has everybody. But in my own personal experience with the man, I’ve only talked with him three times, and all three times he was pleasant.”
Overall, Francis says he is secure in what Hit Row accomplished in their limited time with WWE and is proud of the fact that they did it on their own.
“The thing is I am completely secure in the effect that everything we did in Hit Row, nobody helped us do it. Nobody helped us do it,” AJ said. “So if you have a problem with how I am as a person then you have a problem with someone who is successful, who is creative, who gives back to his community, who works his ass off, and who is willing to stand up for himself. If you want a show full of cowards that won’t stand up for themselves or you want a rap group that just sits down and takes whatever’s handed to them as opposed to really actually authentically representing their culture? Then that’s on you. I can’t control what you want. Obviously I’m not saying that they have a show full of cowards. I’m just saying that I want to be able to speak up for myself because I believe in what I’m doing and I believe in myself.”
Furthermore, AJ says that Triple H had confidence in them and from day one let them be themselves and write their own material.
“It’s not even just that, the first day we went to debut, the writers wrote something for us and Triple H was like, ‘No. Don’t write anything for them. We can’t tell them how to talk. We can’t tell them how to make this feel real. Let them do it.’ So for the entirety of our run, we controlled everything that we did. If me or us continuing to think, ‘Hey, Briana’s gone. We should make a new song because she’s not here.’ If that rubs people the wrong way ‘cause we wanted to make a new song, well… We’re rap artists. Our whole thing is we’re rap artists. We made the first song without anyone asking us to. I literally, a week before we debuted, I gave Triple H the song and was like, ‘Hey, this is what we want to do.’ He listened to the song and was like, ‘Great,’ sent it to the music people, the music people pretended that they did something to it, wrote their names on it and put it out. We did everything ourselves. So I’m completely content with what we had. The thing is because we did everything ourselves, we can do it again somewhere else,” said AJ.
AJ, Briana Brandy, and Tehuti Miles continue to make hits on the independent circuit as The HitMakerZ. As for Swerve, he's doing his thing in AEW. The four of them did recently reunite at an MCW event and have put out music together since their WWE departure.
