After a career filled with up and downs, of NXT intrigue and, well, being T-Bar in Retribution, Dijak officially informed the professional wrestling world that his time with WWE was coming to an end, with his contract with the promotion set to expire on June 28th.

Now, for fans of the 37-year-old powerhouse, this news was surprising but not particularly shocking, as after making waves in NXT after turning in his face mask for a long, black leather duster straight out of Sylvester Stallone's movie Cobra, Dijak was drafted onto RAW and then effectively locked in the catering room for the rest of his run, biding his time without a single match on television since the end of his developmental run.

Factor in the success of his former factionmate, Shane Haste, in TMDK, who is currently helping out their leader, Zack Sabre Jr., in AEW in the build-up towards Forbidden Door, and the chances of Dijak returning to WWE if he had a similar offer in NJPW felt unlikely, even if, by his own admission, he did attempt to negotiate with the promotion before being stonewalled.

Fortunately, with Dijak now resigned to focus on wrestling elsewhere, he's willing to discuss his experience in the promotion, as he stopped by Fightful to have a full-on interview with Sean Ross Sapp on his career to this point, including how the promotion does releases, which he feels aren't executed in a particularly kind way.

“You know releases happen, right?” Dijak asked SRS. “Pretty frequently. Every six months, there's a conference call or whatever, and ‘Welp, here's the conference call, yup, two days later, here they come.' It's funny because we all start following you because you become the way we find out.”

When SRS noted that WWE does usually put out a press release to announce the release to the talent, Dijak noted that while that does happen, the news is often broken by reporters outside of the company, with some performers finding out online before they get an official call.

“That would come after, though,” Dijak noted. “They would fire everybody, and then they would send us a list and be like, ‘Here's everybody we fired,' and we'd be like, ‘Yeah, we know, we follow Sean on Twitter.”

Is Dijak on the money? By Sapp's admission, it is true, as he has been told that he announced releases before talent were informed in the moment, leaving him feeling gross at the time, but in Dijak's opinion, the only party who should feel gross is WWE, as they simply don't treat their employees in a kind way.

“You shouldn't feel gross, they should feel gross, it's one of the most horrific business practices I've ever witnessed,” Dijak declared. “And I haven't been in a lot of business, but I will always be publically outspoken about this.”

Now, for fans in the know, this isn't the first time WWE has been accused of having bad firing processes in the past week or so, as Matt Camp went off on the promotion for calling employees “family” before kicking them to the curb without so much as acknowledging their exit for curious fans. Still, when a promotion is the leader in an industry and isn't beholden to some governing body, this sort of action can happen.

Dijak reveals how Retribution came together in WWE.

Elsewhere in his interview with Sean Ross Sapp, Dijak reflected on how he ended up in Retribution and how the group rapidly fell apart, if Vince McMahon ever really had things together at all.

“Retribution debuts. It’s a catastrophe. It’s a bunch of writers or extra or small little people throwing things. I viewed it as an opportunity. ‘I can fix this. I can make Retribution a f**king awesome thing.’ I go to Vince. I filmed my own pitch where I had my own mask that kind of looks like the T-BAR mask, but not really. It was meant to be an entrance mask. I film a pitch where I’m talking (with the mask on). I take the mask off, I cut this promo, it’s all dark. I take this video, it’s now my second time meeting Vince, it’s a month later. I take it to show it to him. ‘This is what I think Retribution could be.’ I had a list of names. Nikki Cross, Damo, Mason, Shane Thorne, Tommaso Ciampa. I listed seven or eight people who I thought would fit ‘We’re angry with the company and want to take them out revolution group.’ He watched the video and had no feedback for any of that, but he gave me a five-minute talk on professionalism and talking to people who own companies. ‘You need to be more professional. You need to present yourself better. Not me. I’m one of the boys.’ Clearly, you’re referring to you,” Dijak told Fightful.

“That’s just how Vince operated. He operated in this weird bubble and had a view of himself that was not what he projected. I present it. ‘That’s f**ked. He doesn’t care.’ “Two weeks later, it starts to happen. Mason shows up in the group as a hooded character. Another person I pitched shows up as a hooded character. I show up as a hooded character. ‘He kind of maybe listened, or someone listened.’ I sent it to Bruce and the RAW team. It kind of starts to happen, and I’m like, ‘Oh s**t, this is awesome. We’re all getting called up.’ At this point, there is kind of a focus on Retribution. It’s integrated in the whole program. I know people weren’t watching or hated watching during the pandemic, and had good reason to do so. At that point, it’s a focal point of RAW. The more we do it, the more steam it gets…. it originally started, and everyone looked like a child screaming and throwing a temper tantrum. The more actual pro wrestlers did it, me and Mace are big and imposing, Shane looks good, everyone is hitting each other hard. The segments are going well. We beat up Dominik Mysterio, Keith, Drew, Braun. We’re on RAW and SmackDown. Suddenly, it falls off a cliff. ‘You guys can’t be on SmackDown anymore.’ I don’t think anyone told us, but we heard that it was because Fox didn’t like it. It was before we officially debuted. ‘We’re screwed. They can trash the whole thing. No one has seen our faces.’”

Unfortunately for Dijak, the idea wasn't thrown away, and he somehow ended up stuck in the T-Bar mask for way longer than the faction stuck around. While he was able to rebound and can look back at his run in NXT as a high-point of his run, in the end, he lost years of his prime with a gimmick that simply didn't work, even if he initially embraced the opportunity.