Dolph Ziggler Comments on Recent WWE Absence: “I Was Hoping for Maybe Six Months or a Year Off”
Dolph Ziggler is one of the six men competing for the WWE Championship at Fastlane this Sunday on WWE Network. The match will see AJ Styles defending the WWE Title against Ziggler, John Cena, Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn and Baron Corbin. Ziggler recently appeared on the All Things Wrestling Radio show with Isaac Wenzel and had some interesting comments about the recent time off he had from WWE programming.
Here’s what Ziggler said with credit to the Wrestling Observer for the transcript:
“I will say that I really begged and pleaded for a couple months off the television show, because no matter how good I am or what I’m up to, it seems that 99 times out of 100, I would lose. I didn’t think that I deserved to be on the TV show if I was someone that was losing every night, so I asked to be taken off. I was hoping for maybe six months or a year, and it ended up being four weeks.”
Ziggler willingly gave up the United States Championship on the December 19 edition of Smackdown Live just two days after he won it at Clash of Champions. He left the title in the ring and he walked out. After Ziggler left, WWE held a tournament to crown a new United States Champion. Bobby Roode won that tournament and is still the US Champion. The assumption was that Ziggler may feud with Roode over the title, but that didn’t happen. Ziggler returned in the Royal Rumble match where he didn’t have much of an impact. However, things went well for him in February since he was added to the Fastlane main event match.
There were reports last month that Ziggler recently signed a new deal with WWE, so that’s probably why WWE brought him back soon.
I don’t know if his comment about wanting six months or a year off is really genuine or if he’s playing into his character. That’s up to each individual to decide.
Check out these two promos from Ziggler. They are very good with the first one focusing on AJ Styles, the second one focusing on Kevin Owens and the third one is about Sami Zayn without mentioning them by name.
https://twitter.com/HEELZiggler/status/971447020333367296
https://twitter.com/HEELZiggler/status/971790253768912896
https://twitter.com/HEELZiggler/status/971800113415729152