Tucker was released by WWE in April.
Throughout his time on the main roster as part of the Heavy Machinery tag team with Otis, many fans joked that Tucker would be Marty Jannetty’d if the team ever broke up. And this is WWE, so of course the team broke up for no reason during a draft where both members of the team could have been selected together.
Tucker turned on Otis shortly thereafter and immediately became a jobber who barely received television time. WWE thought so little of him that he won the 24/7 title never even got a match with Otis after the breakup. After he was released, Tucker teased that he had an interesting story to tell.
We might have some of that story now. But the main takeaway I get from Tucker’s interview with WrestleTalk is that he was no better informed about what was going on inside WWE than the fans did as outside observers.
First, he explains that nobody told him about the tag team split until the last second:
“I was never told (about the split) really. The first time I found out that it might happen was at TVs the day that we did the Talking Smack segment (for the draft), I found out a couple of hours before that, ‘Hey we’re gonna do this Talking Smack thing where they’re gonna say that like…’, but it wasn’t like a hard split really, because they were just putting us on different brands and they were kayfabing everybody on what was up. And then a few weeks later we do the El Gran Gordo thing with Otis in a mask pretending not to be Otis, and then I think the split happened two days after that. I wasn’t booked that day, the day the split happened, I wasn’t booked to be on the show that day. And then I got a call at like 1:00 in the afternoon saying, ‘Hey, we need you to come to the arena’. I’m like, ‘Okay…’. And then I wasn’t even told until, I don’t even know, like 3:30 or 4:00 what was gonna go down. And that plans changed a couple of times, and looking back on it, I don’t know this, but I’m very sure, I feel confident that the way that it happened was so that I wouldn’t ask a bunch of questions, and so that I would kinda be frazzled into doing it, which is exactly what ended up happening.”
The story is pretty much the same surrounding Otis’ failed run with the Money in the Bank briefcase:
“So honestly I didn’t really get any answers on that (plans for Otis’ Money in the Bank run) either. I think that Otis getting the briefcase was a real last minute decision, I believe, I don’t know that either. The truth of the matter is, no I don’t really have any set answers, I didn’t get any, I feel like I was definitely lied to straight to my face on multiple occasions.”
Tucker goes on to say that he thinks he was supposed to be moved to Raw Underground after he split with Otis, but that concept was suddenly axed, leaving him with nothing to do on television. He once again reiterates that he was never given much information about it and is just making his best guess.
It really sounds like WWE told this man as little information as possible as to what was going on with his creative direction, which only amplifies the common assumption that the backstage situation in WWE is often chaotic and dysfunctional.