From fired to rehired, Drake Maverick has a new lease on life in WWE NXT

Before his battle with Legado del Fantasma on WWE NXT The Great American Bash Night 2, Drake Maverick chats with Daily DDT about his journey back after getting fired in April, showcasing his serious side for a change, a segment involving the 24/7 Championship that almost came to pass, and more.

Within a matter of months, Drake Maverick became one of the hottest commodities in all of WWE, albeit in unconventional fashion by legitimately getting fired.

At the beginning of 2020, the 205 Live general manager was unfortunately slotted as just another guy on the SmackDown roster. Although he was on the verge of finally transitioning into a full-time in-ring role as part of the NXT Cruiserweight Championship Tournament, he was released as part of the company’s massive cuts in April before the title tourney could kick-off.

Maverick made the most of his opportunity by continuing competing for the championship and eventually advancing to the finals against El Hijo del Fantasma. Despite falling short, Maverick had shown so much heart throughout the tournament that he essentially earned himself another contract with the company, courtesy of Triple H.

Now, the multi-time 24/7 champion has his sights set on new Cruiserweight champion Santos Escobar and the rest of his Legado del Fantasma faction. He’ll get his chance to take it to the trio alongside Breezango on Night 2 of WWE NXT’s The Great American Bash this Wednesday night at 8/7c on USA Network.

As far as what fans can expect from this six-man tag team affair, Maverick has assured that it won’t be “the funny guys” stepping into the squared circle with Legado del Fantasma. Rather, after everything he and Breezango have endured in recent months on the black-and-gold brand, they’re going into this bout ready to wow the world.

“I think you’re going to see a much more serious side from myself and Breezango because we’ve been doing this a long, long time and it’s not very often you see the serious side of us,” Maverick told Daily DDT in a phone interview. “I’m a much better serious competitor than making you laugh and I’m as successful at making people laugh as Breezango, but I don’t think everybody remembers the Tyler Breeze from NXT and the serious competitor that he was. Fandango, the serious competitor that he was. We can go there if you make us and we’re ready to go there on Great American Bash Night 2.

“I know we’ve got a great card. We’ve got title for title, the North American title and the heavyweight title, with Keith Lee and Adam Cole as well as the Street Fight between Mia Yim and Candice LeRae, but I’m telling you, this six-man tag is going to be the sleeper match. It’s probably going to steal the night on Great American Bash Night 2. If you’re expecting a lot of fun and games, you’ll be sadly mistaken because we’re going into this with a bit of a serious tone.”

This is the first time Maverick has been positioned as a full-time active competitor since signing with WWE at the onset of 2018. Previously, he served as the general manager of 205 Live and did his best to make the show as must-see as possible week after week.

Of course, his intentions were to wrestle upon joining WWE, not to act as an authority figure, especially after all the success he had on the independent scene and most notably in TNA. He was of the mindset that most GMs inevitably end up in the ring and that he’d be no different.

“I’ve always wanted to get in there,” Maverick said. “I was like, ‘Okay, general managers generally end up in the ring, so I’ll get to that.’ It eventually happened, I think a year-and-a-half into me as a general manager. I had a match with Mike Kanellis and I got the bug, man. We went there with a dead crowd and we killed it. By the end of it, we had them standing. I came back and everybody was giving us a round of applause and a standing ovation. I’ve made a lot of good friends in the backstage capacity because I talk about wrestling all the time. As long as I’ve been a child, it’s been there. Without wrestling, there is no me.

“When I came back, there were high-fives and I remember the producer Adam Pearce saying to me, ‘That made me want to get back in the ring again.’ I was like, ‘Yes! Got ’em.’ For someone who’s a veteran like Adam, that means a lot. TJ Wilson was my producer that day and it made me feel so good, but it also made me think, ‘Man, what if I did this every week? I’d knock it out of the park every week.’ And I asked them, ‘Hey, how about this–’ ‘No.’ ‘Hey, how about–’ ‘No.’ I just got the door slammed in my face every time I brought it up. It got to a point where, ‘What else is there to do with me?'”

As well-received as his war with Kanellis was on 205 Live, WWE still struggled to find a proper direction for the former Rockstar Spud. His 24/7 Championship rivalry with R-Truth had run its course, his appearances on 205 Live had become infrequent and he was doing nothing of note on SmackDown.

On the surface, other than how his participation in the NXT Cruiserweight Championship Tournament had just been announced around that time, his release in April shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise because of how little he was being used on-air.

He was too talented to be let go, and the faithful fans let the company know it. Of all the departures that took place that fateful day, Maverick’s was arguably the most heart-wrenching because of the video he put out soon after on Twitter with his thoughts on the matter.

He attributes the reaction he received from it to his ability to seize any and all moments on social media and strike while the iron is still hot, even though he had no clue that overwhelming feedback would result in him getting his job back.

“All I remember about that day was getting the call from Mark Carrano telling me I had three more matches. The stuff I learned from the 24/7 title stuff is that everything surrounding the 24/7 title was like reality TV, happening right there and then. If we ever had R-Truth running around the building, immediately there would be an upload of me driving after him. A lot of the time it was hard to mix being the 205 Live general manager and the 24/7 title stuff at the same time and being the serious guy on one show and being the fall guy on the other. It was very difficult to mash that up, but one thing I learned from that whole process was in the moment, if you hit social media in the moment, everybody will be on it because it still feels special right then and there.

This was a different case because this is real life. This is really happening. This is a terrible, terrible situation, but the only guy who has three matches is me. The only thing I knew at the time was that I had been released, EC3 had been released, Karl Anderson and somebody else because we had all been mentioned in this one tweet. I remember watching Drew McIntyre’s documentary recently and I remember it taking a very wrong turn because of what happened with the pandemic and he had to come home. That was reality happening right in front of the camera. I literally pulled the guy that was filming the documentary down the ring and said, ‘This is real life. This is reality happening right now.’ So I stood in front of the camera and I talked, I told the story, and I put it out there. I was like, ‘I’m going to show that I care about this and that this means everything to me.’ I hope you fight and come with me and watch me fight for what everything means to me.

“I went for a long walk after I had done it. I uploaded it, put my phone down, turned off social media and went for a walk. When I got back, I was like, ‘Woah boy, this is really taking off.’ I didn’t expect it to get the love and the support and the feedback that it did. Every kind word, every phone call, every text message, every tweet sent to me. I looked into the camera and said, ‘Everybody, thank you.’ Because I heard every one of you, even though I didn’t keep tweeting and posting. Just know that I heard every one of you and I thank you. And here we are, what a ride!”

Contrary to popular belief, Maverick was in fact fired the entire time he was wrestling in the title tourney. It wasn’t a “work” as had been speculated by fans as much as it was reality turning into a storyline playing out for the whole world to see.

Maverick clarified that the reason he was wearing his WWE shirt in that aforementioned video was because he had already been wearing it while running that morning. He added that the only time fans’ conspiracy theories about him being employed from the very beginning got to him were when it was said that he and the company were slighting the rest of the released talent with what they were doing, which couldn’t have been farther from the truth.

“I’ve seen a lot of conspiracy theories saying, ‘Oh, he’s got his WWE shirt on.’ The shirt was downstairs because the day before we had been filming the return to the ring tournament thing. That just so happened to be on my chair that morning and I went for a run as I do every morning for my empty stomach cardio. I got home, got fired and I’m still wearing that shirt. I didn’t even think about it until people pointed it out. I didn’t think about, it’s just there. It’s one of those things where the stars aligned. So weird (laughs).

“The only time it ever tugged at me was when people said I was using the misfortune of others, which is not true. That was the only time that it tugged at my heart stings. Every one of my colleagues that I had spoken to that went through the same thing that I did had been nothing but complimentary for how I handled everything and that was the only time it tugged at my heart strings.”

Due to how he was positioned as a non-player on WWE TV earlier this year, Maverick defends the company’s decision to fire him, even though it was an incredibly tough pill for him to swallow. He took it in stride and used all of that emotion to his advantage while chasing the Cruiserweight Championship, earning a few victories in the process.

It was ultimately a blessing in disguise, as it led him to where he is now on NXT, a brand he had hardly been a part of before recently.

“I’ve said it previously, if you’re looking at this as a business and everybody should and I did as well, you’re not doing anything with me,” Maverick said. “You’re paying me a lot of money. You’re not getting a return. I would have done exactly what happened in releasing me, but thankfully, I was still given the opportunity to film these three matches by Triple H and the NXT guys. The only hard transition was walking into a fresh locker room. I think I’d competed on every brand except for NXT. Drakey 10 Shows or whatever (laughs).

“Yeah, coming into a new locker room and showing respect to that locker room as well because I don’t think the NXT locker room knows how much I respect them and how I’ve been watching them religiously for many years. Also having respect for guys at the Performance Center who have been there for several years who haven’t had the opportunity to be on NXT TV yet, as well as the trainers. All the guys who have helped create this wonderful, wonderful NXT Universe.”

Now that he bleeds the black and gold, he’s looking forward to facing all the top talent the brand has to offer. He’ll likely have his hands full with Legado del Fantasma for the foreseeable future, but beyond them, he’s looking to go one-on-one with NXT stalwart Johnny Gargano.

Once the underdog Maverick is currently, Gargano began to embrace the hate in February when he betrayed his best friend Tommaso Ciampa. He’ll also be in action at The Great American Bash against Isiah “Swerve” Scott, but it may not be long before he crosses path with Maverick if the ex-205 Live GM has anything to say about it.

“The guy I want to face right now is Johnny Gargano. He’s the guy I’ve always seen as the white knight of NXT,” Maverick said. “I see him as the guy everybody just fell in love with and saw his heart and desire and everything. Now, he’s just switched that all off and become something totally different, something a little bit bitter, something with a little bit regret. I honestly think I could bring something out of him he hasn’t seen before and I also think he can bring something out of me people haven’t seen before as well. I just think it’s a very good contrast of styles, we’re both roughly the same age, we’ve both roughly had the same journey, and we both roughly have the same feeling toward our journeys here to WWE. I think that right now in NXT would be my TakeOver match if I were to have one. I think we could tell a wonderful story.”

While touching upon other parts of his WWE journey up to this point, Maverick specifically brought his time spent with AOP as their manager in late 2018. It was a puzzling move for fans at the time considering he was still serving as the GM of 205 Live and AOP had inexplicably ended their partnership with Paul Ellering from NXT.

To his credit, Maverick did lead them to the Raw Tag Team Championship, but he felt the alliance was doomed to fail from the start because of how he couldn’t compare to Ellering as their mouthpiece and manager.

“My initial thoughts were that they deserved better than me, I really did believe that,” Maverick said. “I thought Akam and Rezar were monsters, they were killers. I thought they were fantastic. When I got presented the Creative for it and was told I had to wear the AOP outfit, I was like, ‘Okay, am I Spike Dudley to the Dudley Boyz?’ Then it was nothing like that. When I put the gear on, I had to have a seamstress to make it a Drake Maverick-size AOP suit because they’re just monsters and that outfit was still kind of big. Had they given it more time to develop it before we put it out there, I think it would have been a success. Their run with Paul [Ellering] was so strong that now that they’re paired with me, geeky old Rockstar Spud from TNA, is not going to match them as well as the manager of The Road Warriors. I honestly wish that would have had better than me because they deserved better than me. If Paul Heyman was their manager, gold. What they were doing with Seth Rollins, gold. I just think it was a bad fit and it wasn’t their fault. We all tried to make it the best we could. Some things just don’t work and you just move on. It is what it is.”

On the bright side, his long-running rivalry with R-Truth over the 24/7 Championship has been another highlight of his WWE run so far. He and Truth traded the title back and forth for many months, including at Maverick’s own wedding.

The two took the title to new heights and were the best part of Raw for a considerable stretch of time in 2019. Of all the angles he pitched for the feud that he hoped would make it to TV but didn’t, a “live consummation ceremony” (a la Edge and Lita from 2006) with his wife Renee Michelle topped the list.

“I pitched (laughs), and it would have been a spoof and it would have been totally PG, but I pitched a live consummation ceremony. It would have been Renee in the ring on the bed and it would have been me dancing around and doing everything like that. Then it’s me going under the covers and then Renee’s there all funny. Then you have R-Truth pop up from underneath the covers and then I pop from under the covers, ‘What the hell!’ Of course, the end is R-Truth rolling me up and wins. I thought it would have been tremendously entertaining, but I got nothing back on that. That was one that I pitched. We never found out the end, have I done it or not? I just thought it would have been tremendously entertaining and it would have ended exactly how I should have with R-Truth winning the 24/7 Championship.”

It’s that instant reaction from fans in attendance that Maverick and the rest of the WWE Superstars miss so much and can’t wait to experience again. Whether he’s perfecting his sports-entertainment craft with R-Truth or being put through a table by Santos Escobar, he believes it’s the audience that helps make moments that much more special.

“It’s so much more difficult to create these organic, beautiful moments without the WWE Universe there, but we’re doing it,” Maverick said. “That’s the power of WWE and it’s a blessing because we can still put our product out there, even during one of the hardest times our human race has been going through.”

Regardless of what brand or promotion he’ll be a part of over the years, Drake Maverick has never failed to entertain the masses in every role he’s been given. He’s achieved Superstar status through all the adversity he’s had to overcome and has only scratched the surface of what he can accomplish under the WWE banner.

Catch Drake Maverick in action against Legado del Fantasma on Night 2 of WWE NXT The Great American Bash this Wednesday at 8/7c, only on USA Network.