Kazeem Famuyide speaks about his time in WWE.
On February 5th, former WWE creative writer Kazeem Famuyide announced that he parted ways with WWE after spending one year in the sports-entertainment company. Kazeem wrote a message to those in company -- thanking them for allowing him to live out one of his dreams and he never thought he would get to write for a show that he grew up watching. Kazeem dove more into his WWE departure during the 'Flagrant 2' podcast that he hosts with Andrew Schulz and Akaash Singh.
Kazeem revealed that he found out he was being let go from the company around the time that Kristap Porzingis was traded to the Dallas Mavericks and continued the story from there.
“I literally found out right as [Kristap] Porzingis got traded. I literally saw the alert on my phone and they were like, ‘Yo can you come to the office real quick?’ I was in Stamford.” He continued, “No, we were putting together RAW for this week that’s on right now. Honestly though it’s one of those things where it’s like….”
A picture of WWE Chairman Vince McMahon was placed on the screen and Kazeem told the producers not to do that. He said that he had a great experience working with WWE and him being let go from the company had nothing to do with lack of pitches or ideas, but there were a few things that he was not picking up on at the speed that the company may have wanted him to.
“Don’t put that… I don’t want people to see it because wrestling fans are crazy, and once they find out, ‘Oh, I’m not there anymore’, they’re gonna flock to this and be like, ‘Oh, what is he saying about Vince?’ I got nothing but love for them." Famuyide said. "They were super dope man. I had a great f*cking experience working there and it’s like… I get called in the office… basically [they’re] just like, ‘This is great but we’re gonna go in a different direction’ and I was like, ‘Alright, this was cool. I enjoyed it.’” Kazeem continued, “Nah, you know what it was? They could kind of tell I was -- there was certain things that I wasn’t picking up on that they wanted me to pick up on quicker. Not as far as pitches and stuff, but just certain ways that they do things there. It had nothing to do with working with talent. Talent was really upset that I was leaving, or got canned. Had nothing to do with pitches. The pitches were really good -- always had stuff on TV to do and all that type of stuff. It was just little housekeeping stuff and they kinda knew that I had other stuff going on, and that’s not a gig where if you got other stuff going on, you can’t really be super one million percent on that.”
Kazeem shared that former manager to The Great Khali and current Senior Vice President of WWE creative David Kapoor was the one to let him know that he was being let go from WWE. Famuyide mentioned the hectic travel schedule as a reason why there are not many lifers in WWE and added that he was not going to quit and was going to ride the job out until he was worn out or let go.
“This guy Dave Kapoor. He was a really dope guy. He’s S.V.P. of creative, and he was awesome. He was the guy who hired me. It was one of those things where, just the whole experience." Kazeem continued, "I didn’t think I was gonna stay there that long honesty. I always told you guys, I just wanna go there and experience it and see what’s like and when they call you and say, ‘Hey you wanna do this?’ Like yeah. Go and f*cking do the sh*t. Enjoy the ride. Man, it was just one of those things -- there were no hard feelings. They were like, ‘Something might change in the future. We might call you back eventually and the door’s always open’ but I was like, ‘Yeah... ‘ once they said that, it’s not open right now." He laughed. "But once they said that I was like, ‘Yeah man, that was cool. I enjoyed this, thank you for everything, thank you for the opportunity. They paid me out for the rest of the deal. I mean not for nothing, it’s one of those things where like, there’s not a whole lot of lifers there anyway. It’s so much travel and contention. It’s a lot. It’s a lot to ask [of] somebody. So, it was one of those things where as soon as I heard, I just felt great. I was like, ‘Oh gosh. I can go home and work on other stuff."
Kazeem Famuyide can be seen in videos on WWE's YouTube page with The New Day. While mentioning the group, Kofi Kingston of the New Day has an opportunity to capture the WWE Championship this Sunday at 'Elimination Chamber' and to view the updated match card for that event, click here.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit the 'Flagrant 2' podcast with an H/T to Fightful for the transcriptions.
