Road Dogg on Reasons For His Decision to Leave WWE, Not Going to AEW For Producing Work, Him Having “A Lot” of Input on WrestleMania 42 Card, & More

As noted before, WWE SmackDown co-lead writer Brian “Road Dogg” James departed from WWE this past March. James’ departure from WWE was due to issues related to his unhappiness with his job and diminishing role in WWE’s creative for some time.

A recent virtual fan signing event featured James and AEW coach Billy Gunn as the guests. One of the topics discussed included James’ thoughts about his reasons for his decision to leave WWE.

“It was moving too fast… It was just moving too fast for me. We talked about my brothers and their grandkids and I didn’t get to spend a whole lot of time with mine so, I’m gonna do more of that now.”

James also gave his thoughts about if he believed the WWE: Unreal docuseries on Netflix was exposing the wrestling business too much.

“As an old timer, I think we always feel that way (that it’s exposing the business too much)… The idea behind it, in my opinion, is it’s an on-ramp or an exit ramp into the actual episodic television show, and I don’t know if there’s a metric that can tell you whether that works or not.”

In response to a question given to Gunn about how much of the producing in AEW actually makes it to television, James responded stating that he does not know the answer to that question and shut the door on the possibility of him joining the company in the future for a producer’s role.

Brian “Road Dogg” James – “I don’t know the answer to that. I’m sorry,” he laughed.

Billy Gunn – “I don’t know the answer to that either.”

James – “No,” he replied when asked if he could know the answer sometime in the future.

Gunn – “No.”

James also gave his thoughts about if he had a lot of input on the creative plans and direction for WrestleMania 42 before he left WWE.

“Yeah, I did. A lot.”

James also gave his thoughts about the current card for WrestleMania 42.

“I think it’s strong. I think it’s as strong as you’re gonna get. I really do. I’m excited about Brock (Lesnar) and — look, I’ve got nothing bad to say. They’re moving fast and they are growing expeditiously, financially, they’re setting records every — you can’t say nothing bad. It just was moving too fast for me. I’m getting older and it’s a young man’s game. They’re running fast and they’re running fast internationally.”

James also gave his thoughts about how difficult it is to book a third hour of wrestling television and brought up the difficulty of booking two live hours of wrestling television on a weekly basis on its own.

James – “Oh my God. How hard is it to book two hours of live TV every single week? Nobody ever talks about that.”

Gunn – “It’s not hard for me at all.”

James – “It’s because you don’t do it. You never have, and now, somebody else is finding out. They never have either.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com 1, 2, 3