Dean Ambrose, a Grand Slam champion who WWE recently announced will be leaving the company when his contract expires in April, is the guest on Curt Hawkins & Zack Ryder’s Major Figure Podcast this week.
It’s a very Ambrose (or Jonathan Good, as they use real names on the show and as he gets older, Good is deciding he likes being called by his full first name) interview. From how he told Hawkins “f*** no” when first asked if he’d come on the show to how his aversion to owning a lot of stuff not only means he doesn’t collect toys, but led his then-girlfriend now-wife Renee Young to ask if his old apartment was a “crack den”.
In between, though, Dean’s childhood action figure collection is the basis for a discussion of their shared lifelong love of pro wrestling. And these quotes in particular are primed for (over) analyzing given Ambrose’s current situation:
“It’s easy to forget why you love wrestling...
It’s still hard to wrap my brain around it that I’m even in WWE... Because you’re so used to just walking around and seeing Vince McMahon and Triple H walking - like I’m so used to just having conversations with Vince McMahon. It’s hard to remember like, ‘whoa, you were just a kid watching this on TV. It’s like, whoa!’
There’s a lot of people who are just here for the money, that didn’t grow up watching it, don’t care - don’t care what they do, have no artistic care for what we do, but you guys are like me, like, this is all we’ve ever loved. This is our thing.”
Ambrose’s current contract status or relationship with WWE is never directly brought up. The date this conversation took place is also never explicitly mentioned - they says that Hawkins first asked Dean about appearing when they were in Argentina, which was a December 2018 trip for Raw, so it’s after that, but we don’t know if this is from before or after news broke that he’s leaving.
They’re clearly quotes which fit with someone who wouldn’t have a problem turning down a fat check if the situation wasn’t right. Are they statements from someone who could just walk away from the business entirely? He’s said in the past he could. We may be about to find out.