In a recent interview with Talk Is Jericho, Nic Nemeth (fka Dolph Ziggler in WWE) discussed several topics, including how his New Japan Pro Wrestling appearance came about, help from Shinsuke Nakamura and more.

“A couple of years ago, I’m not close friends with a lot of people, but a long time ago, when Shinsuke came up from NXT, at the time I was doing the thing where everybody who shows up wrestles me. I didn’t really know him, I didn’t really watch Japanese wrestling, I don’t watch our wrestling, I famously don’t watch wrestling, I hate everything because I was in a bad place, but I love my job and doing what I do.

After WrestleMania, Shinsuke comes up to the main, does whatever he does and we’re overseas, him and I had to stay and do the dark match after TV, and everyone else went on. We’re sitting next to each other, we put a couplf of matches together, I’m not really outspoken, I had requested a bottle of jackfire whiskey and we had that for the ride, you want a sip, we just start talking, we had a couple of whiskeys and we were buddies. It was so great, because he’s the biggest sweetheart in the world, we had a good bond and I liked wrestling with him.

A long time ago, every time my contract comes up I am like, I’m going to get out of here, I have nothing left to do, I’m kind of sitting on the bench, break in case of emergency when someone is having a World Title Match, or something and Shinsuke goes, if you ever get out of here, I have some connections and I would like to help you out, that’s so cool, I don’t know anybody.

Years and years go by, and I sent an e-mail to the boss, this is Vince at the time, we were not sure what was going on, but I sent Vince an incredibly long e-mail, 90% thankful, oh my God, the years were so great, you taught me to do all this stuff and the 10%, this is messed up, I have to get the hell out of here, there is no purpose for me to be getting paid millions of dollars to sit on the bench, or to be a three-minute match like a local, pay locals to do this, there is no reason for me to be here.

I didn’t hear anything back for two weeks, and then I found out I was released. I sent that to a few different people, I don’t want to name names, but I sent it to very important people and Vince was the only one that wrote back instantly and was like, this is a lot to unpack, let’s talk about it further. Sir, if you want me to fly to Stamford tomorrow, I’ll be on a flight and he said thanks, we’ll think about it and two weeks later, I was released.

First thing I wanted to do was, I’ve never done independents, I’ve never gone around the country, except with WWE many times. I was like, I’m still friends with Shin, hey Shin, do you think I’m still good at wrestling, what do you think about Japan and he’s like, I’ve got you, put a couple of pieces together, get to Rocky Romero, who is the go-between, and luckily for me, they were happy and excited. That was one of the first things I did when I got released, first week in.”

The full interview is available at this link.