How Vince McMahon Upset Led To Swerve Strickland’s WWE Release
Swerve Strickland has revealed the scolding he revealed from Vince McMahon as his WWE career burnt out before it even really began.
Swerve Strickland used to be known as Isaiah “Swerve” Scott in WWE but his time in that company came to an unceremonious end in November 2021 when he along with Top Dolla and Ashante “Thee” Adonis who comprised the Hit Row group were released by the company. That release came two weeks after the other member of the group B-Fab was also let go.
Perhaps more surprisingly, these releases came a month after the group was part of the WWE Draft and moved to SmackDown from NXT.
But now Swerve Strickland has shed light on what really happened to Hit Row and it seems one member of the group rubbed Vince McMahon up entirely the wrong way.
Vince McMahon Blasts Lack Of Respect From Swerve Strickland’s Group
Speaking in an interview on VladTV, Swerve Strickland discussed Hit Row’s WWE exit and noted the only warning sign they received was when B-Fab was given and then had her flight to SmackDown taken away:
Coming up, I think there was a contract dispute with the girl of the group, Brianna [B-Fab]. That’s speculative, I’m not sure that’s 100% true. Shoutout Bri, she’s still dope, she’s still up there now. They brought her back. Something happened with that. As soon as we got drafted, the following week, we did a promo, and then she wasn’t getting flight information to be at SmackDown. It just kind of disappeared. It was like, ‘We all got ours. Where’s yours?’ ‘I didn’t get mine yet.’
So we were all talking amongst each other, like, no, we didn’t get it. It’s getting closer and closer to the flight time. Where’s Bri at? ‘I still have no flight, I still don’t have anything.’ It’s literally just got taken off, she got the flight, and then it just went away, it disappeared. I was like, yo, what’s going on? We’re on the flight, we’re coming down, and we start getting our notifications, and we’re seeing all these releases happening.
Ricochet is right next to me on the other aisle, he just looks at his phone and looks at me like, ‘Yo.’ All the talent is just looking at all their friends just getting fired. It’s like a group of eight people just got fired that day. That whole year, I think they let go of 150 talent and staff. This was coming straight out of COVID, too, and during that COVID year, WWE had to keep running.
They worked something out with Florida, the governor of Florida, that it’s like it could keep running through COVID, like grocery stores, hospitals, police officers, WWE. [Laughs] I don’t know how, but that’s a necessity for survival in Florida. So we were able to run through, but they lost a lot of money, just to keep production running and not touring, and not able to go overseas. We lost a lot of money, so had to get it back somehow.
So a lot of talent, staff just got let go. So something happened there. She was on the list. My girlfriend at the time, she was on the list, she got let go.
The group’s reaction to B-Fab’s release led to a meeting with Vince McMahon with one member apparently getting aggressive as they tried to find out what happened to B-Fab’s flight, something McMahon took as a mark of disrespect and Swerve Strickland thinks that got heat on them that never went away:
Then we meet with Vince [McMahon] or whatever. Apparently, one of the members of the group was just, they complained at the office because he was calling, asking her for her flight, what’s going on. They’re like, ‘We can’t disclose that information to you.’ He’s like, ‘What?’ He started getting aggressive on the phone apparently at Titan Towers. So we’re meeting with Vince. We have to talk to Vince about this because he was apparently upset with it.
He was like, ‘First off, that’s none of your business. You’re a talent, you do this. You worry about what you do. Don’t worry about anybody else, even if it’s in your group. You worry about what you do. That’s how we do here. That’s a respect thing.’ We’re just sitting there in the hallway of this arena, Bruce Prichard behind him, [John] Laurinaitis behind him, and Vince is right here, and they’re just sitting there, standing like puppy dogs, watching Vince just bark at us [laughs]. I was just like, wow.
I think that heat got on us right there. He’s just like, ‘Nobody just asks for a meeting with me. There’s people that work for me 15 years that’s never had a meeting with me.’ I was like, ‘Oh, cool. I feel honored now’ [laughs]. We got the little bit of scolding, but it was just the one member of the group that made that call, and apparently who he was talking to in the office complained about he was ‘aggressive’ on the phone or whatever. Who’s to say how that conversation actually went. Probably a recorded phone call somewhere, I don’t know.
But real quick, Vince was talking about that, and then he switched it like, ‘But we’re gonna have a lot of fun tonight, guys. We’re gonna have a lot of fun. We got some good stuff for you coming up.’ I was like okay, cool. We did a segment with Sami Zayn on SmackDown. Came in the back, shook Vince’s hand, [he’s] like, ‘That was great. You gotta smile. Make sure you put that smile on out there, whatever.’ Cool, cool.
Go to the back of the locker room. We were like, ‘Okay, I think that went well.’ Then Sami Zayn comes back, he’s like, Apparently, Vince didn’t like it. Vince hated it.’ We’re like, we just saw him five minutes ago. He’s like, ‘Yup, apparently, he just didn’t like it.’ Okay.
Swerve Strickland concluded by discussing his own eventual release and says he believes it came down to one member of the group having significant heat backstage:
Next thing you know, one of the group members gets appendicitis, he can’t wrestle. So now it’s just left [to] me and the big guy to have these tag matches. Apparently, he upset somebody in the back somewhere, somehow. I’ll never forget to this day, it was before the show, rehearsal and everything. We go over the segment. I come through the back, and Bruce Prichard’s just sitting by himself in the Gorilla Position.
He’s like, ‘Hey, Swerve.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah?’ He’s like, ‘You know you’re the veteran of this group, right? You’ve been doing this the longest. You have the most experience.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I do.’ He’s like, ‘Alright, take control.’ I was like, ‘Okay.’ Two weeks later, we all get let go.
That was the last time…then all these reports coming out about what happened, what possibly happened, and it was like speculative heat, major heat on one individual that caused everybody to get released and all that, which might have been true. Then I’m hearing from talents I’m close with, they’re like, ‘Yeah, it was him. Yeah, it was him.’ I’m like, damn. Then, 90 days until I can get hired and get a new job.
The rest of Hit Row were rehired without Swerve Strickland in 2022 after Vince McMahon’s fall from power but Top Dolla was released again one year later, Ashante Adonis and B-Fab are still with the company.
All of this is a long way in the rearview mirror for former AEW World Champion Swerve Strickland. Current AEW World Champion Jon Moxley is in Strickland’s sights once again with the two men set for a showdown on Dynamite ahead of their championship match at Dynasty.