Less than two months after being selected to RAW in the 2024 WWE Draft, Donovan Dijak was told his services were no longer needed by his now-former employer, officially becoming a free agent after the company showed no interest in negotiating a new contract with the former Retribution member.

Now to some, this move came as a surprise, as WWE seemingly wouldn't have brought Dijak up to RAW if they didn't have something planned for him, but after a fun run in NXT that seemingly rehabbed his career within the promotion, he did absolutely nothing on the main roster and now heads off to free agency, where he could sign with any promotion he pleases right away.

Surely that won't be AEW, right? Well, while Dijak has said some pretty harsh things about the promotion in the past during his initial run in NXT, in actuality, the one-time Retribution member told Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful that he actually holds no ill will towards the promotion, as he was simply defending where he worked and the co-workers he shared the ring with, many of whom currently work for Tony Khan.

“People have this funny idea in their head that I hate AEW and that I was this WWE shill, which is not the case. I was very protective of NXT when I was part of it, which ironically is most of AEW at this point. Black & Gold just shifted over brands to AEW,” Dijak told Fightful.

“If people were talking s**t about NXT, I would give it right back because I’m always going to feel that way about myself and the people I’m surrounded with and associated with. If you look at the AEW roster, I’ve wrestled probably 80% of them between Ring of Honor and NXT Black & Gold. That’s most of the roster. All these people are my friends. At no point was I against the idea (of AEW).”

Asked about his relationship with Kenny Omega, who famously called Dijak “Donovan D**khead” in a BTE segment, the now-free agent let it be known that he doesn't hold their interactions against each other, and would be happy to work with him in the future.

“I clarified this in a tweet. Kenny and I, as far as I know, we have no animosity towards one another. When that happen, he made the initial statement. I don’t know if it was a work or a shoot. It doesn’t bother me either way. I heard the interview or saw the transcription, and he was taking shots at a roster that I was part of,” Dijak noted.

“So, I took shots back because that’s what I’ll always do. I don’t care if Vince McMahon took a shot at me. I would tweet at Vince McMahon. If someone comes at me, I’m always going to defend myself, and it will always be lighthearted. I have the utmost respect for Kenny and everyone else in AEW. I have never said otherwise. He’s one of the best wrestlers in the world, and I respect him, Cody, and everyone who created AEW. I will never change my viewpoint. I will also never back down from an altercation.”

While Dijak may not be the most popular performer in WWE history, and thus probably won't be the first free agent TK attempts to sign on the market, he is good friends with Shane Haste, who rejoined TMDK in New Japan after spending time as Slapjack in Retribution alongside the former T-Bar. If TMDK wants to add another member, a big, enforcer type who can put in work alongside Zack Sabre Jr., and NJPW is willing to pony up, don't be surprised if the former RAW wrestler shows up at Forbidden Door to really open things up in AEW.

Dijak reveals how he ended up on the WWE main roster in 2020.

Elsewhere in his interview with Sean Ross Sapp, Dijak revealed how he ended up on the WWE main roster in 2020 and whether or not he was initially called up with Retribution in mind.

“The whole feel of it was, ‘We don’t know.’ I know they didn’t know because I was there speaking to him about it. It’s 2020, we’re coming off Portland TakeOver, me and Keith are coming off this great feud. I don’t have a solid sense of what the booking…nobody in WWE has a super solid sense of the booking or the trajectory, especially talent. Maybe those in charge do, but talent, even the top guys, they might have a general idea, but nothing is set in stone. It seems like we’re building to a triple threat at (the next) TakeOver. I have all this new gear that no one has seen,” Dijak told Fightful.

“It’s modeled after the Emperor from ‘Gladiator,’ it’s this white suit of armor for entrance gear. It’s beautiful and cost me a fortune because I never used it. TakeOver got canceled and shifted to USA Network, which was a catastrophe. COVID hits, disrupts everything. I start getting a feel, people started talking to me more, that I was in the past as opposed to the future. I was like, ‘I wonder if the plan was to do something at TakeOver, and then that got shifted.’ Usually, guys got called up at the RAW after WrestleMania. I thought maybe something was happening around then but the timeline was shifted around. All of RAW is at the PC, there is no crowd, it’s odd. I get notified a little before I wrestled Johnny Gargano, I was the first guy he wrestled as a heel in that run. I had essentially turned babyface. I got notified, at some point in that window, that I was being called up to RAW. ‘Great, this is wonderful.’ It never really happened. This was such a period of confusion in WWE.”

After working some fantastic matches with the likes of Keith Lee and Johnny Wrestling during his time in NXT, it really did feel like WWE called up Dijak with no clear plan for his run, as he went from working promising matches as Dominik Dijakovic to being stuck in the middle of the pack as T-Bar seemingly out of the blue. While WWE shouldn't be shamed for trying new ideas, this one really didn't work, and every single member of the factions was eventually released from the promotion in no small part because of the angle's failure as a result.