Ex-WWE Star Gets Honest On Real-Life Heat With Swerve Strickland

One former WWE star has revealed that they’re still not on speaking terms with AEW star Swerve Strickland.

Despite success in NXT and being promoted to SmackDown, Hit Row was released just weeks after their main roster debut in 2021. B-Fab was the first to be let go, and two weeks later, Top Dolla (AJ Francis), Ashante “Thee” Adonis, and Isaiah “Swerve” Scott (Swerve Strickland) were also released.

Swerve Strickland looked back on the group’s WWE release and how it came about. The former AEW World Champion said he was told that one member of the group acted aggressively in response to B-Fab being let go. This caused the remaining members of the group to have heat with management, and they were quickly released.

Now, AJ Francis has given his side of the story on The Ariel Helwani Show, and claimed that things were not fine between him and Swerve Strickland; something that only happened since right before Strickland’s interview came out:

Man, ask him. When you have him here, ask him. [Helwani: what’s happening?] You won’t find one interview with me bringing him up first. [Helwani: yeah, I know] You won’t find one. [Helwani: but you were cool right?] Yeah, we was cool until a couple months ago, apparently.

We was cool until a week before his interview came out. Shout-out to Chris Bey, I saw him at Chris Bey’s benefit show, and everything was cool, no problems, everything was cool.

Then the interview came out and I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m just gonna clear the record, say what actually happened.’ We’re not talking in innuendos, let’s talk about what actually happened, and I ain’t talked about him since unless somebody else bring him up, that’s just me. [Helwani: which I did, we’ll figure that out] It’s OK, I knew that you would.

Swerve Strickland & AJ Francis Don’t Speak

Francis noted that he’s not spoken to Swerve Strickland, and that’s unlikely to change. Francis also added that he was unhappy with any assertion that he had wanted to be the leader of Hit Row:

Oh, no. I mean, we haven’t talked. I mean, we don’t talk. Even when we were in Hit Row, there was the three of us, and then he was part of that, so that’s why when we came back, we called ourselves The OG 3 because we were Hit Row, right? And it made all the sense for him to be added to Hit Row: he was already on TV, he had TV equity, he’s a really good wrestler.

I’ve never said… he’s a great wrestler, as far as in-ring wrestling, he’s incredible. He’s one of the best to ever do it, but everything we was doing in Hit Row, we already had, so I didn’t even want to be the ‘leader of Hit Row’ in fact, you can even find promo where we said there is no leader in Hit Row, we’re all equals.

But people just decided they wanted him to be the leader, right? So then we get called up to the main roster off of something the fans completely made up about him being the leader, when we all said, including him, all said there’s no leaders. When we got called up and some report [claimed Swerve and Ashante would be the tag team, I would be the leader] and people [complained about me being the leader]. We never said none of this. None of this ever happened, y’all made this whole thing up, but that’s just the way wrestling works.

Hit Row minus Swerve Strickland were brought back to WWE, and although B-Fab and Ashante Adonis are still with the company, Francis was soon released again. He is currently part of the TNA roster, where he forms the First Class tag team with KC Navarro.