Dean Ambrose revelas why he left WWE at Talk is Jericho

TALK IS JERICHO PART 7

Jericho: Yeah. It's an alternative.

Mox: ... any of our mission. We're just gonna be over here doing our best. Putting on our best product. And if a byproduct of that is it pushes WWE to re-evaluate their creative process, and it makes Vince - not that he's gonna step aside, we all know he's gonna die in his chair - but maybe he'll listen to somebody else's ideas. Maybe he'll be open to doing it a different way.

Jericho: Maybe he won't micro-manage everything so much. I think that's the biggest problem.

Mox: The last - I've never been micro-managed more than I was in the last four months, once I turned heel. It was so weird.

[Jericho cuts a promo advertising electric toothbrushes for Father's Day.]

[Jericho follows this up with a promo advertising the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's campaign to remind you to buckle your seatbelt.]

Jericho: Did you feel at any point, besides the few times you mentioned with Nia Jax, that they tried to bury you in any other way?

Mox: Well... so after that they did the weird press release, then they put me against EC3, debuting from NXT. Great talent, great friend of mine, excited to work with him. They have EC3 come in as a babyface, defeat me in two minutes. I dunno if this is before or after the press release, uh... it's at like the same time. The crowd does not like this, because it's transparent what's happening and this is not a... this is not good for EC3, because now he's gonna get the backlash.

So it was an unfair position for him to be put in. So we get to that weekend, I'm working with EC3 on house shows, now I'm the biggest babyface on the show. I'm a heel, I'm thumbing him in the eye, I'm making fun of the town, it doesn't matter, they're...

Jericho: Because you're the bigger name and you're the underdog now.

Mox: Yeah, they're violently rejecting him as a babyface and they're cheering the hell out of me. It's got nothing to do with him, it's like an anti-WWE...

Jericho: Yeah, you're a martyr.

Mox: Yeah so... then they go, talking to the writer by text and he's like "You're gonna work with EC3 again, he beats you in two minutes again," and I was like, I couldn't help it, I was like, "Fine, that's cool. Am I the only one that sees the inherent problem in this?" And even the writer knew, was like "Oh, that it's making you a babyface or looks like we were burying you and that's backfiring?" and I was like, "Yep, that stuff, that's what I was talking about" and he was like "Yep, I know."

But it's Vince, "He's got you, he's determined!" So by the time we get to that Monday there are, from what I understand, the reports from the house shows, the producers telling him what happened, and he's pissed. Apparently he's like, mad about this. That like, god forbid, so sorry that the fans, who I've busted my ass for for years, might be upset at the fact that you want to bury me on the way out, y'know, like... Sorry, dude, y'know?

That I've given my body up for, sorry that they have a shred of respect for me that you apparently don't have. So then I get to TV that night and they're just like, Jamie's a producer, he comes up to me and he goes, "You're going to do a little promo with Seth, he's a heel and you're a babyface." We just switch roles, no explanation, so I guess that was their solution.

And then like, the Shield comes back and we do that whole thing, and then I start working a series of matches with Drew McIntyre who, we've had a bunch of great matches but now it's like increasingly more DQ matches and every week I think this is finally where they write me off. So they put me through tables, they put me head in a guardrail, smashed my head off, he's kicking my head off every week, now it's like a different gimmick match every week so it's like they tried to kill me figuratively twice and it backfired so now they're just going to kill me literally and... y'know...