Scott Garland opens up about his decision to leave WWE.
For the past five years, Scott Garland (Scotty 2 Hotty) was a coach at the WWE Performance Center. This past November, Garland took to social media to share that he requested his release from the sports-entertainment company.
He has since returned to in-ring action and competed against Joey Janela at Game Changer Wrestling’s ‘Die For This’ show. Garland sat down with Chris Van Vliet to discuss his post-WWE endeavors and why he decided to step away from the company. He believes that the talent releases took a big toll on him and was not thrilled to see people he established relationships with be cut.
It was over the last couple of months. Once the pandemic happened and all the releases started happening, I think the releases took a big toll on me. When I became a coach, I had no idea how much I would love that job, and those guys are then like your children. You create these relationships with people, and you see them get released, and you find out with everyone else when they come up on Twitter. My buddy in Nashville texted me, ‘Oh, the releases are happening again…’ So then I jump on Twitter and I see somebody released that was in my class and I just saw [them] 3 hours before. That’s how I am finding out, and dude, this is not cool.
One of Garland’s gripes was being informed about a talent’s release before they found out. He said there were occasions when a talent would send coaches ‘thank you’ messages and they assumed it was because of a class they held at the Performance Center, but it was actually because that talent was departing the company.
No, towards the end they started doing a group text when they let people go. That was one of my beefs when I left. I don’t want to know when talents are getting released before they do. But once it’s done, can’t you send something out to you know, have an intern who is sitting beside the person doing the cuts send a text to their coach and say, ‘Hey, I just want to let you know [this person has been released].’ Me and some of the other coaches had talent texting us saying, ‘Hey, thanks for everything’ and we respond with, ‘Hey, no problem. It’s great having you in class.’ And we think they are talking about being in class today, but no, they’ve just got cut. There were just so many releases, and I wasn’t having fun, and I saw people outside that appeared to be having fun.
Later in the conversation, Garland was asked what is WWE looking for in wrestlers. Scott stated that they want younger prospects.
He thinks the direction will swing back to what it used to be because they’ll need people with experience to balance out with those who do not have experience or a great deal of it.
Well it might be different now [laughs]. But when I left there a month ago, they want young. [Chris asks if they want people who have been in a ring before] It doesn’t seem like it. I know that they are doing try-outs for people who have never done this, they are hiring all these college athletes. I have always said that you can’t teach passion, and you need passion to do this. No matter how much money you are making, if you are on the road doing 200 shows a year and you are traveling, which adds about 50 days, you are looking at 250 to 300 days a year on the road. No matter what you are making in money, you need passion. I think at some point it will swing back the other way and they will go, ‘Where are the men at? We need men!’ And then you will see a bunch of guys come in who are a little bit older and more experienced. Putting green on green on live television can be dangerous.
Prior to his GCW debut, Scotty’s last match was in 2016. Before he went to WWE to coach, he became an EMT after graduating from Fire Fighter Lake Tech.
