Enzo Amore Reveals What Exactly Happened at RAW 25 Before His Release

Former WWE Superstar Enzo Amore was a guest on The Steve Austin Show where, among other things, he discussed in detail what happened during RAW’s 25-year anniversary show.

The #MeToo movement has been sweeping the world, as more women come out with truthful allegations towards significant figures in the media industry. Amidst this, Amore was caught up in a series of rape allegations by a woman named Philomena Sheahan.

These allegations towards Amore only surfaced on the day of the anniversary show, and eventually led to his suspension and release not even an hour apart from one another.

At the time of his release, Amore was the reigning, defending WWE Cruiserweight Champion and was embroiled in a feud with the current Champion in Cedric Alexander. He was also appearing to enter an on-screen relationship with the now-former WWE RAW Women’s Champion Nia Jax.

Since his release, Amore has started to go by ‘Real1,’ which coincidentally was the handle he would go by on social media even when he was employed with the company.

Amore explained to Austin that he was rehearsing a segment with the APA as his phone kept blowing up. This was when he reportedly found out about being suspended and subsequently fired from the company. Hear his account of this below:

“Vince McMahon was running around backstage — headless horsemen, insanity. It’s crazy and I found out about this while I was in rehearsals with the APA. So my phone keeps blowing up, people keep texting me. I’m like well people texting me, why is my phone keep ringing, keep ringing going through these rehearsals. I look and I see a tweet and that’s how I found out. I didn’t know anything. I called Mark Carrano immediately.”

“I don’t change in the locker room I change by myself so I’m off changing by myself and I’m like, ‘Hey Mark we need to talk’ and he’s like ‘yeah, no s–t.’ Link up with a lawyer from WWE in-house attorney and Adam Hopkins from PR. They asked me about the situation and I’m completely transparent and I call my lawyer because I was running around by myself before I called Mark Carrano backstage in a laundry room — I was in a laundry room calling my lawyer. I was like ‘get on the phone get this s–t handled right f–king now this is crazy.’ Then I called Carrano and I told him, yeah man I just paid my attorney a retainer whatever you need to sort this thing out you know. The police had never contacted me about this not once, not one time.”

“I got a buddy of mine who hit me up and was like, ‘hey man my girlfriend got an email from a guy saying he was an investigator saying some girl made a claim against a wrestler.’ Never mentioned my name but obviously, I kinda knew what he was talking about. That was when I called my lawyer immediately and I was like, ‘find out what’s going on here.’ Now I didn’t have to pay my lawyer to do that I just called my lawyer and this was in December and he called up and there’s nothing going on. There’s no investigation that he finds out about, my lawyer finds out about nothing.”

“Then this person puts this tweet out there on Raw 25 which is not a coincidence. The police still to this point have never called me or contacted me. Not only one time, I’m not made aware to anything that’s going on outside of the fact that I have a friend who gets an email saying from a person claiming to be an investigator that there was a wrestler involved and they wanted to inquire to get more information. They never said there was a rape case or anything. They didn’t say anything like that so I didn’t even know these details. I find out like everyone else in the world.”

From here, Amore would begin to receive questions as he walked around the office. His day went from interacting with Austin and Bubba Ray Dudley to being the driving force behind some serious script changes for Raw 25 to accommodate for what happened.

“When this happens I make Vince aware immediately because I go right to Vince, what else are you gonna do? The company is aware of this just as I’m made aware. This tweet goes out and the company is running around backstage and you know how backstage is. So they don’t know where I am. They’re trying to find me, they’re trying to call my phone.”

“I go see Vince he’s the first person I go see, are you kidding me? Give me a break. So I go see Vince and he says, ‘we can’t send you out there tonight, we can’t put you on the show. This tweet, this is really bad.’ I didn’t say anything. I just stood there and I let Vince talk for a minute and I said, the first thing I said was, ‘you know and I know that I didn’t do this and I deserve better than this because I’m a good person,’ and I walked out. Vince said to me, ‘you gotta tell me when something like this is happening.’ I said, ‘man, I don’t know but I knew that there was that email, there was an email that came in to a friend from a person who was an investigator who never claimed to be a police officer.'”

According to the former Cruiserweight Champion, the thought never occurred to him to contact Vince McMahon or WWE officials when he received the email mentioned above back in December. This is because he called his attorney about the situation and was told there was nothing to it.

“You know I walked into Vince’s office, told him I was a good person and didn’t deserve this, I walked into the hallway. As I’m walking down the hallway at the Barclays Center he told me you know, ‘go home.’ I said to him I guess I’m on my way to DC, SmackDown is in DC. I’m like, ‘alright you sending me [to DC]?’ he goes, ‘go home and wait to hear from us and we’ll tell you if you need to come to SmackDown tomorrow.'”

“At that point I had no idea that I was suspended or being fired and the way it was kinda relayed to me it was like, ‘okay I guess I’m going to DC tomorrow, I’m playing by ear, waiting to hear.’ I walk down the hallway and I see Adam Hopkins and I see Adam and I’m like, ‘is there any further information? Have you guys gathered any further information?’ like on a legal tip. He says, blah blah blah and then he informs me that I’ve been suspended and the tweet already went out.”

“I was just in the room with Vince. He sent me home, told me maybe DC tomorrow, I didn’t hear I was suspended. Adam told me and I had just stepped out of Vince’s office. I grabbed Carrano immediately I saw him just by chance by something and I said, ‘I’m never gonna be able to forget this.’ I said ‘look at me right now I’m outta here and I’m not gonna forget this.’ I walked out with a lot of emotions, I turned my phone on airplane mode and I dipped out of Barclay’s Center and I know where I am I go from there to my sister’s house in Deleware. I escape. I got in the car, I drove to Deleware, my sister’s house immediately from Raw and I recorded myself speaking the entire drive.”

The footage from Amore’s drive to Deleware reportedly still exists, but he is unaware of what he is going to do with it yet. He was reportedly informed the next day through a call from Mark Carrano that WWE would no longer be working with him. This led Amore to claim this was their loss, not his.

Amore is now working on a number of projects, including his future in the music industry as a rapper. Just yesterday he released a passionate ten-minute promo-like rap on society as a whole. You can read more about that here.

What are your thoughts after reading this? Has your opinion of Amore shifted? Sound off in the comments below.

With H/T to Aaron Varble via WrestlingInc for the transcription.