#Dolph Ziggler isn’t giving up on his next WWE breakthrough

(Edited for length and clarity)

Q: Why will this rematch against Drew end differently after you didn’t cash in with your own stipulation at Extreme Rules?

A: I felt like I was closer than I have been in several years, maybe about a half of a count away from becoming champion and I felt something special out there. But I know someone like Drew and myself, we will literally beat the hell out of each other at any chance we got not just to prove to everybody else how good we are, but to show what that championship means and what being champion means.

I didn’t think it was gonna be that close because I’ve seen him be on a hell of a tear lately and I actually haven’t been racking up the wins like I used to. The fact that we got in that match and I know him so well and I taught him a lot of things that he’s really excellent at now, I felt that I was an inch away that if I can just get him in the ring, I don’t care the stipulation, one more chance to do that, I could really have him all figured out.

Q: What kind of stipulation do you expect from him? For Extreme Rules you teased one that we had never seen before, do you think we’ll get a more traditional one this time?

A: He might want to prove something to himself and say, ‘Hey man, straight up match and I’m gonna beat you and show you that I can beat you in a crazy your rules match and I can beat you in any kind of regular wrestling match.’ He might say steel cage. He might say Hell in a Cell. He might say hour-long ironman match and prove himself to me.

Q: Why do you think the WWE championship has eluded you in your career?

A: I don’t know. Clearly, there are people that see myself as someone very important, a utility player who can play any position and be there whenever they need him to be, open the show or main event the show and no one would bat an eye and you spend an entire career trying to let them know that I am here for a reason. I have lasted this long because I’m so good at my job. I have outlasted others that you slapped on the back and said this is our guy 10 different times. So you keep hope alive that one of these times you’ll finally get the approval of everyone and if not, I finish my career knowing I left it in the ring every damn night.

Q: Do you feel that’s the role you are a little stuck in as far as being that utility player?

A: Recently, for sure. But it also does bounce around to where it’s like, we may need someone to take over the reins for the next six months. Dolph’s here and five other guys are here, let’s go with Dolph. Right now, yeah clearly utility player who can bounce in anywhere. But also, when you bounce in somewhere and it works a little bit more than it’s supposed to then that’s how you drop your anchor in there and you try to get moving and you try to make that much more special than it’s supposed to be. If you’re filling in for somebody and they’re not sure what to do and you make it special, then you go let’s go back to this again, let’s make this better or now this is his time.

Q: Booker T recently said on his podcast that he wonders if ‘Dolph Ziggler wasted a decade-plus being the guy wanting to go out there and steal the show opposed to wanting to be like a Roman Reigns, the guy’ and being a little more selfish and concerned with world titles. How do you respond to that?

A: Sadly that’s really ignorant to say, I think, because after 10 years in a row of not being world champion, I said I have to justify me working here and tearing up every match I’m in and stealing that show every night. So I said, I made a little pivot to go, ‘I’m out there to steal the show and set the bar and follow that idiot’ and that’s what I got to live on because it was the only thing that really kept me going. Because you don’t get to be a little bit more selfish in the ring and then you get to be Roman Reigns. That’s not how this business works. You’re picked. No matter what you do, no matter how you work, no matter how awesome you are or how bad you are, you get picked and then you hope for the best and you hope if that doesn’t work out you’re the next one picked.

So that’s pretty ignorant I think of him to say, for Booker T, because being good at wrestling and choosing to be a little bit more greedy in a match doesn’t put you in the Roman Reigns position. Not only that, but when your boss tells you, you are not in that position, you need to be a smaller guy who scraps and steals and crushes and rakes eyes and steal roll-ups here and there because you are not even in that build. Because if I were to be the guy, I’m clearly a smaller guy, it would be based on sneaking wins, Ric Flair-esqe in the 80s going long distances. So we’re not even similar characters.

So being told, say you’re in a match with Drew McIntyre, he’s a big badass guy who’s gonna beat you up. But if you win, you’re gonna sneak an eye rake and roll him up and set the world on fire. So that’s just not knowing how the business works saying that that way. It’s unfortunate because for about 10-12 years of the last 15, I’ve tried to be the guy because I’m someone who can talk, you can go on to a school and talk, can go talk to stockholders, can get in the ring, can be outside the ring, can do movies, can do TV. And you go, I’ve done everything in my power. So if you have a five minute match on Raw and get one more move in, that does not change your position in the hierarchy of wrestling.

Q: On the flip side of that, you have also gotten a lot of praise. The Rock was all in on you potentially becoming WWE champ and Ric Flair and Eric Bischoff have been very complimentary. What does it mean for you to have those guys say that maybe you are a little underutilized?

A: By the way, there is no maybe about it or a little bit. But when you hear people who know … so Bischoff knows the business, the ins and outs, and then he says, this would be the guy I go with. That means something special. When Ric Flair, one of the greatest of all time, a friend of mine, I looked up to him my whole life, says this could be the guy to build the company around. When those two and countless other legends say, ‘Why is this guy not the guy?’, you start to wonder what it is. You go, clearly I have the eye of some of the greatest of all time, not one that’s a friend, not one or two, but 20 friggin’ legends who are all awesome in their different right say, this should be the guy and clearly I’m not so that drives me to want to go, man maybe this is the year where it could happen.

Q: I spoke with Drew a few weeks ago and he said you were a big help when he returned to the main roster because you know what the landscape was and knew how to navigate it. What advice did you give to Drew or what kind of advice was he looking for?

A: We went out there and I feel like there was so much energy and passion and we complimented each other. We both wanted to set an example and say, it’s cool to be a WWE superstar, but if you’re just hanging out saying you’re a WWE superstar not really giving two craps about what the hell’s going on, you need to get out of our locker room. It made me more excited to go out there and prove points and go, I just had this match right here, if you can’t do that or if you can’t hang with me you don’t deserve to be here, and he saw it the same way.

This is about making the business better. It wasn’t so much about asking different things, it was more like leading by example. Me jumping on grenades for him in the ring and behind the scenes to help him out and lead him along where he could at least have one person to have his back because no one else is.

Q: Is there an example of that you can share?

A: Several times I literally jumped in front of him to take a beating away to make sure he could pin somebody at the end or I could jump in front of two people to help him out.

Behind the scenes, most of the time was, he had been gone for however many years, he didn’t know how things work and I being around for so long (knew) to go to the proper channels to make things better for us to make things work, get us in different matches and appearances and that was very helpful I think.

Q: What was it like working with Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville and Otis, just these young hungry kids who are probably eager for advice?

A: It was great. I’m a fan of Otis anyway because he’s an amateur wrestler and he’s a badass one, too. I love that we barely mention it. But he’s really strong and really awesome at wrestling, so it was nice to have somebody I could talk about wrestling with.

Those three always wanted to be better. They always wanted to make whatever situation we were in better and I could throw ideas off them and they could bounce something back. If they’d say, we have this idea and I go how about we go this way and they go that’s cool we didn’t think of that. It would help them out in so many different ways, while also making this cool relationship between me and Sonya where we really had a lot of chemistry and we only did two or three things together and go well this is another special thing. It doesn’t always work like this.

Q: What promo advice would you give to someone trying to figure out how to work without a crowd?

A: You just get a moment to do a Shakespeare-esque monologue and let people see what you’re thinking, how you’re thinking, how you say words, where your pauses are because they are not based on somebody in the crowd hitting a beach ball yelling ‘What.’ So it really gives you a chance to take certain stories that are somewhat gripping and make it more real and more close to home.

Promo wise, the pauses, the waiting, people watching your eyes, people watching your face, people watching you move your fingers and fist around. There are so many things that people can focus on when you are just you and we are all basing it on what you say and not the crowd.

Q: Did a little bit of that happen with the promo with Heath Slater and Drew and what did it mean for you to be a part of that moment with them?

A: Everybody loves Heath. He is a legend. He’s good for morale, and any locker room would be lucky to have him. I can’t say enough nice things about the guy.

To have him be fired and still come back and get a chance to give a very real speech from the heart is something that we rarely get and rarely get to do. I don’t think I’ve ever done one of those speeches.

That is so amazing that he had that opportunity and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy and it made sense. It all made sense with the story with Drew. You have this Terminator in Drew who crushes everybody and rips everyone in half, kicks them in the face and for one minute you saw that he was a person who was sorry and sad and that played into my head games psychologically and made him relatable instead of just this Robocop who can’t be beat.

Q: What was the biggest adjustment you had to make moving to stand up comedy?

A: I’ve wrestled in front of 80,000 people and had the time of my life and a couple weeks later I was in the backroom of a coffee shop in Silver Lake, California with 15 people waiting to go up for this open mike and 12 of them are on their phones not even listening and I walked out on that tiny — it’s not a stage, it’s a black apple cart — and you stand on it and I’m like shaking and I just go, ‘Don’t drop the mic. Don’t drop the mic.’ I pulled it out of the mic stand and I go, OK.

Once you get 10,000 reps in, which I’m very far away from, then you start to get really comfortable, so right now with wrestling, I focus on a match and a game plan and psychology in my brain and I pace around and go get all fired up to wrestle. When it comes down to stand up comedy, I’m pacing, going over my notes, crossing things out, sweating, getting nervous watching the clock going I’m up in seven minutes going Oh my God.

Q: You’ve also done some work as a political analyst. Would you ever consider running for office when wrestling’s over?

A: I don’t know anyone in their right mind who would ever want to be a politician now. It seems like everyone who is one percent against you wants to just get you out of their life or silence you or something and it seems very unfortunate. Like it’s fun for people to make comments online but when it comes to real life and actually running for positions, it’s just there is a lot of negativity that I feel it’s gonna turn a lot of people away from wanting to help and give back. I still want to help and give back to communities in Cleveland and California and Arizona. I love that stuff. I’m very invested in it and I’m very interested in it and I usually try to find a way to make it funny because people are pretty serious about it.

I’m not someone who started following politics in 2016 when Trump was running because everybody I know who used to ask me about politics now tells me about politics since 2016. I live for it, I love for it, I study it. I read the news all day long, but I don’t know. It’s gonna be a little tricky to want to run for office and have so many people hate you instead of wanting to work with you. Hopefully in the coming years, we start turning that back the other way and make it cool to reach across an aisle.

Q: Where do you think things are in the Cleveland sports scene, pretty important season for the Brown and the Indians considering a name change?

A: The Browns will forever be in all our hearts in Cleveland, so it doesn’t matter, but we just got to be realistic about it. No matter that they do, we’ll support them. Let’s get a couple wins under our belts before we talk Super Bowl one of these years. With the Indians, I guess long time coming.

I like that we’re a tough blue-collar town and that’s what the Browns stand for and whatever the Indians become that’s fine, too. A couple friend of mine said the Buzzards would be a pretty cool one, which is what the rock station in Cleveland used to be. It was called the Buzzard and it’s got some pretty cool logos.