Mike Kanellis had requested for his release from WWE a couple of times before including once last October but the company had denied his requests at the time.
The promotion finally let him go as part of the budget cuts recently when they released over a dozen WWE stars including the likes of Kurt Angle, Rusev and more.
However, during a recent interview with WrestleTalk, Mike Kanellis claimed that while he had asked for his release before, he didn’t want to get out his contract right now:
So, I mean in the sense that in my head it was always like if there is going to be releases, it’s probably going to be me and probably going to be my wife, just because my wife has been out on maternity leave and they were doing anything with me. I had already asked for my release in the past, but we did work things out after that. I didn’t want it to happen during a pandemic.
Kanellis went on to explain his stand saying that he wanted to get released when he could have gone out and done things elsewhere which is not possible now:
I think that’s a hard thing to explain to people, not to go off topic, but there are a lot of people who are like ‘well he did ask his release’, which I did, but my wife never did and I want to get that clear, my wife was happy to stay there. But it’s like, you thinking’s the back of your head, yes I did ask for my release, but no one wants to be released in the middle of a pandemic. You ask for your release when you think you can go and do other things. I asked for my release because I wasn’t working and I wanted to work.