Back in April, Impact Wrestling surprisingly announced the release of former World Champion Eli Drake, with reports stating that there was frustration from management on the way Drake handled his inter-gender match-up at the United We Stand event against Tessa Blanchard.
Now that the former Impact World Champion is a free man, Drake talks about what truly led to his departure with Chris Van Vliet, which started from telling the company earlier this year that he intended to leave:
“Back in January, I basically just let them know like ‘hey, I’m not intending to stay this year.’ I kind of let them know my intentions that I wasn’t planning to stay this year. I really thought about it last year and I almost left. I know they thought I was leaving, I thought I was leaving at one point and I ultimately decided to stay. I kind of came to the decision that there are a lot of options now.”
Drake discussed his issues with his bout against Tessa Blanchard, stating that he wasn’t comfortable facing a female talent:
“So they announced the match and I had no prior knowledge of it, When I saw the announcement, I immediately emailed the necessary outlets and said ‘hey guys, I’m not comfortable doing this. I will wrestle anybody else on the roster, I’m just not very comfortable doing an intergender match.’ … I have amazing respect for Tessa Blanchard. I’ve told many people that she is easily the best female wrestler in the world. She’s so intense with everything she does and her facials and moves.”
Drake said he and management eventually hashed out their differences before agreeing to part ways.
“Eventually, we kind of hashed it out. We had some emails back and forth and finally I had a phone call with Ed Nordholm [just before the beginning of June]. He was very gracious to reach out. We had kind of spoken at length on what we could agree on, what we could do to move forward in a way that’s amicable. I told him that I have no intentions of giving Impact a bad rap. They’ve been very good to me. I live a comfortable life because of the money that I made there.”
Check out the full interview where the former Impact World Champion talks about possibly going to the WWE and much more:
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