Top Dolla Discusses The Craziest Part of WWE’s Creative Process

Hit Row was recently released from their WWE contracts. Top Dolla, Ashante Thee Adonis, and Isaiah Scott talked to Busted Open Radio about their releases. Ex-member B-Fab was released shortly after the team was called up to the main roster, but not with them.

AJ Francis, also known as Top Dolla, was seen by Vince McMahon as the breakout star of the faction. The mouthpiece of the group said that the company’s creative process that was quite peculiar. He says they were instructed to write promos on various wrestlers. Then, the creative team listens to the recordings and decide what will work.

“Craziest part of the creative process with us is that when we got called up to SmackDown, they said, ‘we want you to write promos for The Usos, The New Day, The Viking Raiders, the women’s division for Briana and an introductory promo. The introductory promo that we did on SmackDown with our debut was the promo that we wrote that night when we wrote all five of those promos.

But I bring it up because, it was two o’clock in the morning and we are writing these promos. We record us saying the promos so we can send it to them. So that they can see what we are going to say and how we are going to say it. Because it sometimes… you see something on paper that doesn’t translate the same way. You can’t comprehend from the paper how it’s going to come off.

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So we sent them the videos of us doing the promos so they can see it. They were like, ‘wow, we love the work ethic. Nobody does anything like this, nobody dedicates themselves to do things like this.’ Then like, it’s all for naught, so it’s just wild to me.”

There were several creative directions WWE was considering for Hit Row before their release. None of the ideas came to fruition and they were seen as a disposable commodity by the company. The remaining members were let go on November 18.

Thanks to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription!