Heath Slater Talks WWE Run Being Frustrating, Wanting To Work In NJPW

Heath Slater, who was released from WWE back in April after spending 14 years with the company, recently debuted in Impact Wrestling. Slater's run in WWE was full of ups and downs and "The One Man Band" recently joined Pro Wrestling Junkies for a live Q & A to discuss his 14 year run with his former employer and some of the frustrations he experienced over the years when the company wouldn't give him much to work with.

"It's frustrating as hell," Heath said. "I was just kind of numb to wrestling. I was pitching ideas before Rhyno, after Rhyno and during our run together. I'm serious! Even with us together and pitching stuff to just draw a story out or us turning heel and doing things that are hardcore. Then again as baby faces and him teaching me to be hardcore and hitting me with things and me responding, 'Ow, that hurts! I don't want to get hit by that.' Just things to make it funny and entertaining, but it's just one of those things were you pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch but nothing happens and you end up getting put on the shelf. You just get numb.

"Next thing you know, it's someone else is on the come-up and I get a call to come make him look good," Heath continued. "I never got where I feel like I could have been. It's just one of those things where business is business and BS is BS and there's just a lot of that in the business."

During one portion of the session, the host initiated a word analogy game where he would throw out a name and Heath would give a word or statement for the response. When Vince McMahon was brought up, Heath let out a long sigh of disappointment and simply said, "Let's leave it at that."

Heath went on to discuss what some of his options are when he initially got released from WWE and mentioned having a bucket list of things he wanted to accomplish in the business before he was ever even signed that he'd like to go back and start checking some of those things off.

"I was there for 14 years," Heath said. "I feel like people forget how long I was there. I'm 37-years-old now. I got signed to them when I was 23. I was a baby and, in a lot of ways, people really watched me grow up on TV. Now people want to know, 'You've been there, so now how can you go anywhere else'? I had a bucket list before I even got signed to WWE. I had all this stuff I wanted to do, but was kind of forced to skip all of that because I was only on the indies for a year and a half before getting signed. I just skipped past all of that, so I was good with my money and I'm okay."

"I really just want to go out there and have some fun," Heath continued. "I want to go out there and do some indies, Impact, ROH and if I do All Elite Wrestling then I'll do AEW. I really want to go do New Japan. New Japan would be a lot of fun! There's just so much that I want to do. Impact was cool because my contract was up and a lot of my buddies were going there, so like 'Hell yeah, let's go do it and have some fun.' Once I got released, opportunities started presenting myself and my friends all started calling and I started agreeing to things and that's just what happened. I've got a lot of places I want to go and I'm pretty sure I'm going to go there."

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Pro Wrestling Junkies with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.