Joe Alonzo discusses his departure from the NWA.
On July 1, 2024, Alonzo's time with the NWA came to an end, as his contract with the promotion expired. This news came as a shock to many fans, as Alonzo had established himself as a rising talent in the company by holding the NWA Junior Heavyweight Championship for 118 days before dropping it just before his departure.
While speaking to Fightful for a new interview, Joe Alonzo talked about his departure and how the company began announcing that they re-signed wrestlers shortly after Alonzo and Kate had announced their departure.
"So, isn't that kind of funny how once me and Miss Kate make our announcement that we are departing that all of a sudden, NWA is making a lot of posts saying, ‘Oh, this person's resigned and this person's resigned.’ I think it was like, I don't want to say damage control, but I thought that was kind of funny how that happened after we made our announcements of us kind of going separate ways. But I'm happy for everyone who signed. It was the right career choice for myself. It was a gamble."
Alonzo then dove into the long process behind his negotiations with the NWA.
"It was a long process because I wasn't sure if they were going to offer me anything else. Like I thought so, because like I was doing a lot of stuff with like with Billy himself on screen and we were doing a lot of cool things and they were pushing me. But then no talks of contracts. There was like a couple awkward conversations they would say in public in front of the crowd and I was like, ‘What are we doing here?’ They wanted me to do like a like a work shoot thing with like saying like, ‘I don't need the NWA. I'll leave this place.’ I was like, ‘Uh-oh, like what's going on?’ Then they offered me a contract and I won't get into the numbers, but I'll get into the time length of it. It was it was a year and a half and I was okay with the time frame of it, but the money I wasn't the happiest with and then I asked to have a conversation personally with Billy. I was like, ‘If Billy's the man who's signing my checks, can I speak to him? Just him and I or whoever has to be there, whatever, but I want to speak to Billy.’ I don't want to say this person's name, who it was, because I'm trying to learn to grow up and be a little bit more professional. But old me would just go off the walls and say who it was. So it's a battle within ourselves. So the person was like, ‘I'll try to make that happen. He's on tour right now, so it's kind of hard for him.’ He gets back to me and is like, ‘Hey, he can't really talk right now, but here's what we could do.’ Then they offered me another contract. But before they offered me the contract, I asked them, I said, ‘Hey, do you think that Joe Alonzo is a valuable asset to the NWA?’ They was like, ‘Are you kidding me? Of course, that's a stupid question. Obviously you are.’ I'm like, ‘Okay, well then please like excuse my bluntness of what I'm going to ask you. What I'm going to say is this contract says otherwise. This contract says that you look at me as just another guy and I don't think this is fair. What can you offer? What's the best you can do?’ Then he's like, ‘Okay, like, let me get back to you.’ He gets back to me in a day and the next day he has another contract offer, but it's for two and a half years. I just turned 27. I said, ‘Hey, like, I'm going to be honest with you guys, the NWA isn't my end all be all for my career. I do want to go do other things eventually. That's just a little too long and I'm going to be approaching 30 by the time that contract would be done and still like it's not worth my time to commit to a company that long. Like I can my name value can skyrocket from now until six months from now. So I'm not gonna lock under that number. I don't think that's fair to do.’ They're like, ‘Oh, well, there was like a couple different things they were trying to explain to me like loopholes and you can get a raise and whatever.’ I'm like, ‘Okay, but it doesn't say that. As far as contract stuff goes, I just don't think this is fair.’ So I told you to remind me about this. I just remembered. It took me a while to make this decision and I really didn't know. There were a couple of conversations with other companies who seemed interested. Nothing was for sure. I think like legally, when you're under contract, you can't talk about too much. You can throw feelers out there and that's really it. So there was a couple of other companies interested and I was kind of like waiting to hear about that. Again, nothing was for sure and I explained to this person and I said, ‘Hey, man, like I'm really putting myself out here and being vulnerable, but I appreciate the NWA. I feel like this place has grown to be like my family in a way. You guys say to trust the process of where the NWA is going, but you're not saying where that is, you're just saying trust the process. I can't do that.’ I said, ‘I'm gonna be honest, man, what you guys are currently signing me at, my current contract and what you guys are offering me now, like I can't even afford my own living comfortably.’ I said, ‘Here's my current living situation. I really broke it down and I was like, dude, it's hard, it's a struggle for what I'm going through. I'll just say it, man. I'm like, dude, I'm living on somebody else's couch. That’s kind of hard. For me to take pride into being signed to a company that I don't even make enough to live off of. So like, can you help me out? Like, if I'm really a valuable asset to your company, like help me out.’ The response I got was, and this is where I knew it's time to walk away from the NWA, was, ‘Well, hey, there's a lot of other people who don't even have a couch to sleep on. So some people have it worse.’ I'm like, ‘Yeah, well, you know, the difference is their boss isn't a fucking multimillionaire, so that's where I was like, you know what? Alright, this is it. That's that.’ I think that if, like, they claim, and I can only speak for myself for the most part, but. they claim that they care about their employees and their talent and I think if someone comes to you with something like that, I think it's like, okay, let's see what we can do. Even if it was like, offer me a social media job or like another gig to help the company grow, but they didn't wanna do that. So I'm like, ‘Okay.’ In the process of all that, I was told I can trust a lot of my mentors that were kind of helping me out with making a decision. I was very vulnerable with them. I told them that other companies were interested. I told them what was in talks and, man, to any young kids out there be careful who you trust with the information that you have and what you give them."
Alonzo continued to criticize the company, detailing a time where an executive talked to him a hotel for three hours about his religious and family views.
"But yeah, man, like don't trust, not everyone's trying to help you. Like they'll say they're trying to help you, but you know, I don't want to say any names, but there's a lot of people I trusted with some information and I know they went back and told them. It was what it was. I was very upset at the time of the betrayal. I'm doing a lot of self-reflection on things now and just learning to shut my mouth and not tell everyone everything. Only trust the people who have been there since day one, and to trust my family only. I don't know. It was just weird, man. I didn't like how many people in the locker room knew that I might have been leaving. A lot of people knew the contract situation, which I thought was very unprofessional, that I had a lot of other talents coming up to me, like trying to get the inside of, ‘Hey, are you gonna sign, are you leaving?’ Like, why does everyone know this? This is not professional and I knew that the office was telling people to try to like find out. It came to the point to where even one of the bosses asked me to like meet him in his hotel and to talk and try to like figure out this contract situation and like a three-hour conversation of trying to talk to me first about my religious beliefs, my family views, and just things like trying to make me very vulnerable and then just take that and then be like, ‘Well I think you know God is like is kind of laying it out there for you.’ I'm like, ‘You're really gonna take like that and twist that and try to like use that to get me to sign with your company.’ Like I just think it's really shitty and it's really shitty business and it's not hard for me to sense when someone's being super fake. I do want to say for the record like my relationship as far as with Billy himself was very good. Billy’s been very good to me. It just sucks that I couldn’t handle everything with him and we had a long talk after we agreed to part ways. I talked to him and I just told him, ‘Hey, man, I didn’t tell you everything I was going through, but I asked to have a meeting with you and such-and-such wasn’t really making it happen. This is why I didn’t want to do this he-said / she-said, third party thing. Let’s all just talk. You’re the one paying me,’ and a lot of stuff got lost in the shuffle. I don't want to say it got ugly, but it got very awkward and I had a good talk with him. I talked to him about personal things and then it turned into like, now we're distant and it's weird and it's awkward. A lot of the people who I was very close to and I trusted, I'm distant from them. I'll tell you this, I won't say the talents of who it was, but this is where they say they care about you, but they don't. They say they want you to be better, like to do what you can hear and then go other places and then, ‘We wish the best for you to go to the next place.’ But like when I knew early on that I'm not going to stick around with this company or if I always knew it was a stepping stone to get somewhere else, but I knew I wasn't, I didn't plan on resigning because months ago, there was two NWA wrestlers who got WWE tryouts. You reported that they were at that tryout and while they were at their tryout, the office called them to tell them, ‘Hey, you are no longer needed at the NWA.’ Because they had a tryout non-contracted. Just like stuff like that. They're going to call them at their tryout to tell them that they're pretty much fired."
Fans can check out Joe Alonzo's full interview with Fightful in the video linked at the top of this article.
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