Mike Bennett Says He Considered Retirement After WWE Release
On this week's episode of the ROH Strong Podcast, Mike Bennett and Maria Kanellis-Bennett joined the show to discuss their time with WWE and their release from the company in April. The couple also spoke about their future in the business.
Mike Bennett was rarely seen on TV during his run with the company and said that the moment cuts were announced he knew that he would be part of the string of releases.
"I had asked for my release three times already, one of them was public," Bennett explained. "The only reason I went public was that they wouldn't grant it to me, and I was fed up."
Bennett thinks that the company was mad about him going public, so he said he accepted his release despite it coming in the middle of a pandemic. Bennett said he did not believe that his wife, Maria, would also be let go as well.
"They're not really going to release an entire family though in a pandemic, right," Bennett said. "You know what's going on, you know we have two brand new kids, you know you just fired me and now you're going to leave us out to dry."
Since his release, Bennett said he has considered giving up wrestling. He said that WWE and his run there sucked the passion out of him.
"I don't know if it's a mix of emotions with the pandemic mixed with WWE sucking the ever-living life out of me and making me absolutely hate professional wrestling." Bennett said. "There was a good two month stretch where I had made up my mind to not want to wrestle anymore."
Bennett continued and said that the feeling has passed now and he's more excited than ever to get back in the ring. He said in WWE he was a sports entertainer and wants to get back to being a professional wrestler.
"I want to go and have the matches I know I'm capable of, I want to go and tear it down," Bennett explained. "I just want to be a professional wrestler; I spent the last three years as a sports-entertainer, and I thought I would like it and I absolutely hated it."
He said he misses the feeling of entertaining a crowd, and when speaking on the future, said he wants to go wherever he thinks he can get that feeling again. Bennett goes as far to say he would love to once again compete in a Ring of Honor ring.
"I'm not going to sugarcoat anything, I'm not pretending. I'm going one place and this and that, I love Ring of Honor and would love to end up there." Bennett said.
Kanellis chimed in about her future as well and said she's open to a lot, and even though she is 38, she still wants to be an asset, maybe even to Ring of Honor. She said she could even see herself ending up on the business side of things. She said the growth in women's wrestling has been amazing to see but she believes there is still more to achieve.
"It's been incredible to see how many women have become mother's and have either worked afterwards or made appearances after," Kanellis said. "I don't want there to be some arbitrary 'oh you must complete your career at this point because you've had x amount of children and because you're married now and no longer sexy,' I don't think that should be any women's narrative."
Although neither have committed to a new company at this time both have alluded to looking into new deals and Bennett is currently accepting bookings.