Jack Swagger Comments On His Life After Leaving WWE

Earlier this year, Jack Swagger parted ways with the WWE after over a decade with the company. The 34-year-old recently spoke to the Memorabilia Guy. 

"I think the thing that I'm feeling the most is the freedom – the best things in pro wrestling happen naturally. Whether it's the fans gravitating towards something, or a character developing a certain way. The best ones develop naturally and you have to have freedom in order to do that. The promotions are really becoming their own brands and some are working together and some are doing very good business. And they are providing wrestlers outside of WWE a very good opportunity in this day of social media and the internet to really have the freedom to create their own character and really run with it.

"Don't get me wrong, the WWE has some great people who work on this stuff everyday. A lot of their angles are brilliant and fun to watch. They just tend to get micromanaged a lot. But now I work for my own company, so I guess I make the head decisions on those sorts of things now."

 He also explains the rights to his character

"Intellectually, they own 'Jack Swagger', but I've been that for 10 years now, so I think the easiest way for me, at this point, to not get into any issues, and not to get into any red tape, I'm going as 'Formerly Known as Jack Swagger'. It's very silly when you're talking about human beings, but it's kind of what we have to do right now. Or, I might just become 'The Real French-American' and change my name to 'Jacques Swagger'! (Laughs)"

And finally, the reason why he left WWE

So, it was a tough decision – one that my wife and I thought about for years. I’m very thankful for the career that I had in the WWE. Getting out there and seeing different cultures was a really big perk for me. When it came down to it, I just feel like people had lost each other – communication wasn’t where it needed to be. We’d both started this path together ten years ago. But I just feel like I needed a change, and they needed a change. We can always possibly get back to it down the road. But for me, I was lucky to come out of college and go straight into the developmental programme. So, there’s a lot of wrestling from me across the world to see still. It’s very exciting – the opportunity is just immense.