Enzo Amore On Having Backstage Heat In WWE, If He Has Any Regrets With WWE Run

Enzo Amore's heat with WWE started well before the sexual assault allegations which led to his departure. He was reportedly removed from a bus by Roman Reigns and rubbed many backstage the wrong way.

While appearing on the Keeping it 100 with Konnan podcast, Enzo was asked if distancing himself from the locker room created more heat backstage.

"Honestly, I think that what creates heat is jealousy. I think hate is nothing but love disguised as jealousy. It's either a relatable quality that you see in that person, or it's that insecurity that you have within yourself that you feel is necessary to either lash out or talk s**t," said Enzo. "For me, the way I was raised we didn't talk s**t. When I came into wrestling, I couldn't explain to my friends back home that I was putting on spandex and was losing to a guy with muscles in like 8-10 seconds. All my homies would clown me. I knew I couldn't explain it to my friends but it was all worth it with the light at the end of the tunnel. When I am wearing spandex and getting beat in front of 15 people in a little armory and then I am in front of 85,000 people at a WrestleMania and they're saying 'And You Can't Teach That' with all of us, everything was all worth it. That was the light at the end of the tunnel, which was the beautiful thing.

"Whether you take a contract for $600 a week, and you barely see raises for five years; I mean, to go from that to crazy money you and your family would have never dreamed about making. So, when you go through that you know that that is in essence the goal. You want to go out in front of all of those people and are willing to put the work in and are surrounded by that, in front of a group of hungry people, which is what I believe made NXT so successful was seeing people making that life-changing money and that life-changing opportunity to be on a cable television program. I think that opportunity and that platform is one of a kind right now, which will be interesting to see what will happen with all of those promotions right now."

Enzo's WWE career didn't end as planned but he's not one to second guess the decisions he made. Konnan asked him if he would have done anything differently about his time in WWE.

"Honestly, no. Not at all. I don't live with any regret. I opened up every single NXT show for two-and-a-half years. We were held on to NXT in a time that was any longer than our peers. We watched every single one of our peers get called up that was on the show that we debuted in from NXT. Every one of them left. We were in locker rooms where we were watching the core number of people that started with NXT on the road. Then they held on to us for as long as they did," said Enzo.

"When we debuted, timing was everything. We couldn't have timed it out any better to be in the ring with two guys that we idolized as children [Dudley Boyz]."

Enzo said he grew up a wrestling fan but never understood the ins an outs of the business until he became part of the business. That's when he learned about things such as backstage politics, putting guys over and ring psychology.

"That was the learning curve; that was the hardest learning curve," admitted Enzo. "It wasn't about how to bump, or how to work, it was the psychology of it and I understood the essence of it that I can get on TV a lot quicker if I can talk way faster than if I could with the psychology of a wrestling match.

"So, I put all my eggs in one basket and was afforded many opportunities with great guys in the ring over a time I was there to learn from and in the end I felt like I was in a groove and it was the highlight of my career because it was a brand new locker room. You have to understand that when I came into the business, I never worked anywhere else. So, to go from FCW and NXT, all those guys were in the same locker room as me when they went to Raw and SmackDown, by the time I was in 205 Live this was the only group of guys that I hadn't worked with yet."

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Keeping it 100 with Konnan with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.

Peter Bahi contributed to this article.