WWE’s Top Dolla: Hit Row was one of Triple H’s top priorities to bring back
The morning after their return to WWE, Hit Row’s Top Dolla spoke to Busted Open Radio about the process in bringing them back
Dolla (AJ Francis) said that he and Paul “Triple H” Levesque had kept in communication, even after the group was released and Levesque was no longer in WWE. He had sent Levesque clips of he and Ashante Adonis working indies and talked about working together again in the future.
Levesque reached out Wednesday of last week to gauge their interest in returning and how quickly they could be back. The three had a Zoom call with the new head of creative to discuss plans and then had physicals and contracts this week.
“When (Levesque) got the reigns and is like, ‘I want to bring my guys back,’ we were one of his top priorities to get back because he knew what we could bring to the table. About a week and a half ago, he hit me up and was like, ‘How are the rest of the guys?’ ‘We’re good.’ None of us wasted time this whole time,” he said. “We never stopped training and never stopped being ready. He was like, ‘How fast can I act and get you guys here?’
Dolla, Adonis and B-Fab returned to action on Friday’s SmackDown with Dolla and Adonis picking a tag team win over two enhancement talents. The trio, in addition to then-team member Isaiah “Swerve” Scott, were released in November 2021, in one of WWE’s many rounds of pandemic cuts. Scott (Swerve Strickland) eventually signed with AEW and is one half of the AEW Tag Team Champions.
Dolla acknowledged some of the rumors that his interactions with Vince McMahon following B-Fab’s initial release were the reason for their eventual release.
“People love to say I’m hard to work with. I’m not. I’m hard to fool,” saying there were “a myriad of reasons” they were all released.
“Everyone in the world thinks they know who I am. Everyone in the world thinks I’m hard to work with. People who never worked with me had one conversation with me and felt they could talk down to me like I’m not a 30-year-old man. I told them about themselves and then they get in their buddies’ ears like I’m hard to work with. In actuality, I’m not hard to work with, I’m hard to fool. You can’t tell me something that’s not true and you’re not going to stand on. That’s how I was raised. If that makes me wrong, I’m going to be wrong forever,” he said.
He effused praise on Levesque for bringing all three talents back as there were a hundred wrestlers he could have done that with, a reference to all of the cuts WWE made over the past few years.
Regarding any previous heat, Dolla said Levesque told them he didn’t know what happened before and didn’t care, that it’s a new place and they have a clean slate on this second go-round.
“It was a breath of fresh air. I was down when we got released. Hit Row was hotter than anything in wrestling. Period. I don’t care who you are, get your feelings hurt if you want. When we got released, I feel we had something great and it turned into ashes in my hand. It made me stop watching wrestling for the first time in my life. I went eight months without watching wrestling,” he said.