Raven Recalls Quitting WWE And Bill Watts Firing Him From WCW

Given his success from his time ECW and beyond, it might be hard for some fans to comprehend that Raven had already been a part of both WCW and WWE before he landed in the land of extreme in 1995. Raven was first known as Scotty Flamingo in WCW, where he wrestled until 1993 before jumping ship to the WWE as Johnny Polo until the end of 1994.

Raven recently opened up about his first tenures with both companies during a recent sit-down with "Wrestling Shoot Interviews," during which he recalled quitting for being asked to do more things out of the ring than in it. "Not a great period of time," Raven said. "I wasn't wrestling, I wasn't doing what I wanted to do...At that time I wanted to wrestle, but it's when they took me off of TV completely that I quit ... I was managing, but they had me stop managing, and they had me stop doing the wraparound segments I was also doing on the All-American show which was the No. 2 show, and they just wanted me to produce, and I'm like 'that's not what I got in this business for.'"

While Raven left WWE of his own volition, the same couldn't be said for his time in WCW the year earlier as he was fired by booker Bill Watts over his size. "Watts came in and got rid of me which was ridiculous, and that because of a size thing." He noted that a lot of his time in WWE was spent doing non-wrestling related jobs due to Vince McMahon also seeing him as "too small," with only Sean "X-Pac" Waltman being smaller than him at the time. Raven also had heat with McMahon over partying with his son, Shane.

Please credit "Wrestling Shoot Interviews" when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.