On June 27th, 2024, Donovan Dijak, known simply then at DIJAK to the WWE Universe, announced his upcoming departure from the company he had called home for nearly eight years.
The star’s approach to his impending free agency starkly contrasted the countless others that had come before him. Rather than simply allowing his WWE contract to expire, which it would the following day, Dijak released a raw, honest, and detailed letter regarding his ongoing negotiations – or lack thereof – with the promotion. Claiming that WWE had made no effort to contact him regarding a new deal following his call-up to Monday Night RAW and had ultimately decided not to renew his contract at the “eleventh hour.”
The news came as a complete shock to wrestling fans everywhere. Dijak had just concluded a widely praised and objectively entertaining second run in NXT, where had the chance to expand his character, both on WWE TV and on social media. Becoming the King of the Ratios of X. Overall, Dijak’s WWE career seemed to be finally heading in the right direction, following the debacle of the RETRIBUTION faction. A group that Dijak has previously noted significantly set him back character-wise in the eyes of the WWE Universe.
Despite this, Dijak remained a loyal soldier for the company, always putting on high-quality bouts inside the squared circle. Because of this reputation, WWE fans assumed his call-up to Monday Night RAW in late April as part of the WWE Draft was due to the company finally deciding to give the star the proper push he had always deserved. Unfortunately, those hopes never came to fruition.
While others may allow a departure from the most globally recognized wrestling promotion to crush them, Dijak sees his release from the company as an exciting opportunity. In an exclusive sit-down interview with SEScoops, he noted that he’s finding no shortage of work on the independent circuit, especially in promotions where he made his bones before joining WWE.
Life After His Now-Famous ‘Letter’ on social media:
“I’m excited, Things are going well, my calendars booking up very solidly. I’ve made a few appearances as you alluded to, and they’ve gone well, they’ve gone really well the reception has been great. I mean, these are these are kind of places where I made my mark before I was in WWE, so they were obviously excited to have me back I was excited to be back. It’s been really positive. For the most part…”
While incredibly proud of how the first few weeks of his free agency have gone, he does say he’s been surprised at the reaction from a certain portion of the professional wrestling fan base—specifically, those who equate Dijak’s words and actions as a direct affront to WWE. While the 37-year-old star said he was prepared for some level of toxicity from those within the internet wrestling community, it seemed to be taken aback by the sheer volume of it.
“There tends to be this trend amongst groups of fans, and not a small group, right? There’s, there’s a large congruent conglomerate of whichever thing that you prefer, whatever your your, your preference of professional wrestling is, you tend to gravitate towards that. And you want to love that and defend it, right? It’s difficult to watch it happen because you can mentally prepare yourself for it. But the reality of the situation is there’s some people out there, there’s a good number of people out there, who are now like the, we’ll call it the honeymoon period, is has worn off, and now they’re actively looking for reasons why to dislike me or “side with the WWE.”
Dijak would go further:
“I’ve supported all my coworkers, I’ve been thankful to the people who gave me those spots…If it were up to me, I’d still be WWE, right? Like I want, I want to actively negotiate and they did not. So. So these divisive moments happen. And it creates this split. amongst some, this chunk of fans, were very vocal there just actively looking for reasons to long story, you know, there’s a lot of pieces to it, but basically, they’re looking to affirm WWE, because that makes them feel good, right?…”
His Non-Existent Heat With CM Punk, Despite What Some Fans Think:
He would continue saying that some fans hold onto topics or issues that are already settled. As an example pointed out by Dijak, some fans of CM Punk are under the impression that the former NXT star has some underlying problems with the Second City Saint. This all stems from when Punk, while still technically signed to AEW, visited backstage of Monday Night RAW, sparking a massive reaction from the WWE Universe on social media. Fans began to speculate that the rumors of Punk’s desire to depart AEW for his old home of WWE were, in fact, true.
While surveying the scene, Dijak had no gripe with CM Punk, but he grew frustrated that fans were more focused on people from outside the company than those inside the company who could not get significant TV time. This led to him sending out what some could see as a passive-aggressive tweet, leading some to accuse Dijak of having a case of sour grapes and real-life heat with the former world champion. However, Dijak makes it abundantly clear that this couldn’t be further from the truth.
“CM Punk, I wouldn’t say we’re friends. But like, if we’re in the same room, we go into, we talk to each other, we have a conversation because we both enjoy each other’s presence…It’s not like it’s like we’re best friends, and I’m going to his birthday party, but if I walk into a locker room, and he’s in there, we’ll have a conversation. It’s a nice, pleasant light hearted conversation. That being said, before I met him, I had two of my actual best friends. These are guys who I will go to their birthday party, and I know their children had been to there. And that’s MXM, the former Maximum Male Models, Mason and Mansor..they’re flown out to TV and they don’t have anything that week. So I hear through the grapevine that that CM Punk is backstage and everybody’s blowing up…And in my mind, I’m thinking ‘my best friends are also backstage at RAW and nobody cares.’ Nobody. There’s not one mention of it. There’s not one tweet, there’s not one. And I understand why. Right? I understand that. CM Punk is this huge… That being said, I’m not just going to sit back well, my friends are being ignored, and are going to get released and all these negative things are going to happen that people that I love, and I want to see succeed. So I’m going to use what’s happening to benefit them.
So I posted something, and again, probably not the probably not the best or smartest thing I’ve ever done or it was honest. It’s honestly how I felt at the time…I wanted to shift the narrative as much as I could To get focused on the people that I love and respect at that time, well, CM Punk fans did not see it that way. And they destroyed me. They eviscerated me. They hate my guts. To this day there’ll be a lot of times where I’ll see like hate comments pop up, and I’m like, why is this guy hate me? And [after clicking on their profile” it’d be like, “CM Punk number one fan” and I’m like, Oh, well, they never got over it. Right? Usually, there’s a pretty obvious reason, when someone’s just spewing hate at me…I met CM Punk, and we have a great relationship.”
WWE Contracts and The Realities of Being “Stuck In Catateoring”:
As he’s touched upon and discussed in previous interviews, Dijak’s made it a point to try to explain to fans both the problematic ways WWE’s contracts are structured and why “sitting in catering” is a particularly anxiety-ridden existence.
“We tried to keep our minds focused on that, right. I’m getting paid a good amount of money to basically do nothing. I need to keep I need to keep that in my mind that there are a lot of people out There are struggling to make ends meet. And I need to, you know, be thankful and gracious. Here’s the reality of the situation. We don’t know when that’s going to end and it could end any second. And when it does, you’re in trouble, right? Because you’ve been sitting in catering, you’re not gaining any momentum, this can end in a second.”
“…I love the the platform and the compensation, but I hate the fact that they do not need to have a reason [to release a Superstar] and it kind of defeats the purpose of the word ‘contract’. They don’t have to hold up their end of the three-year bargain, right? Again, this is written in there, and we read it and we know it, but just feels like that part of the contract should be more solid to me…
“If Just you’re sitting in the back, that’s a really good reason for you to get released. If you’re just not doing anything, they don’t have any creative. So it’s difficult, it’s a dark place to be in because you’re trying to do these things you’re trying to get on TV, you’re trying to show them how much value you’re worth. And that’s that’s a hard thing to comprehend for someone who’s saying, you’re just getting this huge deposit in your account every week. Yes, correct. Still difficult mentally, because the future is uncertain. We’re professional wrestlers, we can’t do this our entire lives, our bodies will break down when we’re 45 years old. So we need to have enough money to retire by that age. Or we’re going to be limping around a ring trying to do because a lot of us don’t have a backup skill set, right? You can’t just go ‘oh, well, I’ll be a lawyer’. The only thing I can do is lock up and grant a headlock. So I need a backup plan for when I turn 45 I don’t have enough money to live for the next 40 years of my life, God willing, and to support my children send them through college, you know, I need all that money saved up by X amount of days. So if I get released at this point, and these are all the dots that are connecting in our heads is we’re sitting in catering, staring at the wall, praying that someone reads our pitch…”
The “War” Between WWE and AEW and his visit to AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door 2024:
In 2019, the professional wrestling world was turned upside down when All Elite Wrestling broke onto the scene, providing fans with a true large-scale alternative to WWE for the first time in nearly two decades. Since then, a section of the audience has become increasingly tribalistic, mimicking the battle cries of the Monday Night Wars of the Attitude Era.
On one hand, the landscape of professional wrestling has never been stronger, with more opportunities for wrestlers to find work and for fans to be given many options. On the other hand, according to Dijak, the desire for “war” between the companies may exist more in the echo chamber of social media than in each locker room.
“Nobody wants the fans to like ‘pick a side’ that doesn’t exist from our point of view…Most of us have all the same friends. And we’re all we’re all working towards the same goal, which is let’s make this the most entertaining, profitable, pro wrestling landscape possible for all of us. So the fans can enjoy it as much as possible, and the wrestlers can make as much money as we possibly can. I mean, that’s the goal.”
However, the former WWE talent clarifies that healthy competition among wrestlers for rival promotions is natural. Citing that he himself is very “team-oriented,” going back as far as his days as a young athlete. When asked if his former employer perpetuated the drums of war with their talent, he detailed the only time ever such a significant conversation about AEW took place, when it was announced that Tony Khan’s flagship program Dynamite would directly compete with WWE’s developmental brand NXT, which had just been announced to debut on the USA Network.
” So basically…let’s keep it vague and say “the office” is like, hyping us up like ‘hey, that. That’s our time slot. They’re coming for our time slot’… That was true; WWE NXT was on historically on Wednesday nights at 8pm or whatever it happened to be, and then They took that. I don’t know if they took that personally, but they took that as a attack on business which it was right? It’s trying to divide a market share of fans and make them choose between one product to the other. It’s a business decision, right? It’s a business decision at the end of the day. And but they, a lot of the office was trying to let us know…”We’re going head to head, and we need to show them what we’re all about. We need to show the world what we’re all about…”
As fate would have it, WWE NXT and AEW Dynamite would eventually find themselves on separate nights. NXT moved to Tuesday nights, where it has found strong results. At the same time, Dynamite continues to reign supreme on Wednesday nights for TNT.
AEW has become one of the top landing places speculated by fans since Dijak’s. On June 30th, AEW hosted its annual Forbidden Door pay-per-view at the UBS Arena in Long Island. Dijak later teased showing up to the event, which he did, but only as a visitor and not a performer. Dijak told SEScoops during his visit to Forbidden Door he never entered the locker room, noting that he doesn’t believe in entering locker rooms of promotions he doesn’t work for.
Dijak states that his overall experience visiting AEW was pleasant but very limited.
“I think people were surprised to see me there. But since it was so fresh, and it was so kind of out of left field. But you know, quite frankly, I was surprised to be there. You know, if you told me. You told me two weeks before, you know, I was I was in the web locker room on speed on web speed wrestling Xavier Woods, like three weeks ago or four whatever the time, right? …It was nice, it was nice to see my friends. And it was nice to catch up with people. Other than that I didn’t get like ‘the full experience'”
Dijak made it clear that he never got to visit “gorilla”, and never spoke to Tony Khan at the event. He would praise the company’s production quality, noting it had “all the bells and whistles you could want” for a “full scale operation”.
Comparing His 2 Runs with NXT
Like Dijak’s on-screen character in WWE, the company’s NXT brand itself has gone through some major redesigns in its history. Dijak is one of only a few stars in WWE history to have extensive runs in both the original “Black & Gold” version of NXT, which was run almost exclusively by Triple H, and the current “White & Gold” version.
When asked to compare both runs, and even reveal if he preferred one over the other, Dijak remarked that he looks back on both runs fondly, each for different reasons. However, he especially enjoyed his most recent NXT run. As he feels it provided him with an opportunity to expand his character and be a bit more outside the box than he traditionally had been.
” I think they were both incredibly strong in terms of a product presentation… for me, on a personal level, the second run means a lot more to me, because I got a lot more of what I wanted to do in terms of presentation. I had a lot more matches, I was on TV a lot more. I was on premium live events a lot more. So On a personal level, it was much more fulfilling for me. It seems that the fans sentiment, for the most part, is split. If you look at like ratings and stuff and things like that, I think YouTube views and maybe social media stuff was probably higher for black and gold…”
“For me, I prefer what was happening more recently, because it had more elements of of character integration and storytelling in that aspect. And I prefer a little bit more than that, rather than just the sole focus on in ring product, which isn’t to say that’s what NXT black and gold was. But it was, it was more in that direction. Right?…Like yes, we’ll do some vignettes, backstage or whatever. But for the most part, it’s like ‘hey, we’re wrestlers. And we’re wrestling and here’s why we’re wrestling and we’re trying to win championships’, whereas the newer version of NXT seemed like it had more like, ‘Oh, I’m a vigilante renegade cop, and I’m investigating this guy. And this is and this guy’s in the mob, and he’s taking guys and throwing them off a bridge’, That it had more of that stuff, which I can sink my teeth into a little bit. That being said, it still had the presentation. Of course, I’m an in ring guy.”
Donovan Dijak’s Longterm and Shorterm Goals
As he enters free agency for the first time since 2017, the world of independent wrestling has significantly changed since Dijak last participated. Something Dijak is excited to take advantage of.
He expressed a similar sentiment when asked about his goals for the near and distant future. Overall, Dijak’s objective is to improve and refine his standing in the eyes of wrestling fans. He plans to achieve this by winning titles and getting the chance to compete overseas.
“…The things that have been kind of evading me the most [through my career], are championships, right? You think about how many championships I’ve had, beetween WWE and Ring of Honor, the answer is zero…Even outside of WWE, before I was in Ring of Honor, I didn’t have a lot of championships, and that’s just a fact, I just didn’t have a lot of them…outside of Chaotic Wrestling, I had one championship in my entire life. That doesn’t sit well with me…
Number two is wrestling in Japan. I never had the opportunity to wrestle in Japan. For whatever reason, I wrestled for the IWGP Intercontinental Championship before, but I never wrestled for it in Japan. I obviously didn’t win… I feel like I’ve wrestled for every championship, but I just lost all of them (laughs). So I feel like I want to change that narrative. I want to work in a place that’s a prestigious and hotbed of professional wrestling.”
In terms of long-term goals, Dijak’s mission is to return to a larger platform where he can perform in front of fans who know him and those who have never seen him before.
“You asked about longterm as well. That’s getting back to a platform where I can do those things that I’m talking about in terms of my brand and representing myself, and then also continuing to have those outstanding, excellent matches in front of the biggest audience possible, right? Because now we’re talking about getting in front of people who aren’t aware of a new audience who’s not familiar with me.”
The sky is truly the limit for Donovan Dijak. Promotions and fans are highly familiar with the quality of his in-ring abilities and on-screen character. Any promotion would be instantly better by having him on their roster.