Alicia Atout recently spoke with Fightful about having asked for her MLW release and why the departure was ‘bittersweet’ for her.
You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On asking for her release: “The whole thing was a little bittersweet, to be fully forward with you. Back in August, I did my last appearance with MLW, but left that show not thinking it would be. Of course, we received the news that my partner, Richard Holliday, was very, very sick, and he had to step away for quite some time. So they were kind of jumbled in the back, trying to figure out the next steps for me. Do they put me back in the interviewer position? Do they just throw me with someone else, but maybe it doesn’t make sense? So months by, and then more months went by, and it kind of started to hit where I wasn’t doing television appearances with them or anything like that.
“So I think we both came to the decision where, rather than just make me wait, which I wasn’t very comfortable with, because there’s a lot more going on just outside of the wrestling world for me too right now, it was very amicable, and we decided, for now, let’s part ways. They granted me my release, which was just lovely. There was no BS, nothing to kind of go back and forth with. Now I’m a free agent, which is awesome. It’s very cool because for me, the whole reason that I wanted to sign with the company was to simply be at shows, do my work, and show people what I have to offer. Unfortunately, we’re coming up on what would have been a couple months away from a full year of not being able to do that with the company I was signed with. Again, the circumstances and situation suck because Clout Couple was one of my favorite things I got to do in my career, but sometimes you have to make business decisions over personal ones, and so that’s where this kind of came into play.”
On when her deal would have been up: “It would have been up this December. The whole thing also was also kind of thinking even [Richard Holliday] is to make that return, let’s say it’s summertime or even in the fall, that only leaves a couple more months for me with the brand. That’s if I was to re-sign again. There were just a lot of different things to think about. So once that all kind of simmered down, we realized, okay one, he’s going to be okay, but we also have to wait. Again, it came down to business. I want to be somewhere where I can continue to thrive and have that TV and show what I’m made of. I’ve been working so hard on practicing so many different things, other than interviewing, and so I think it’ll be cool just to see where that goes and where I can bring that to.”
On if she expected the release to be granted: “To be very blunt, I expected my release. I expected that respect back from them. That’s what I was hoping at least because you hear a lot of people leaving whichever company it might be within wrestling, and it can not go well, and lawsuits are involved, and there’s a lot of animosity. J didn’t want that. I was grateful for my time there. I know that the situation was completely out of everyone’s hands. They even tried giving me something earlier in the year, where I was doing stuff for PWTV, I had that little Insider show where I was still repping the brand. Then that eventually kind of made its way out too, so I think they realized that I have a lot to bring to the table, and I was just stuck not being able to put the meal down [laughs], and I wanted to be able to do that. So yeah, I wanted my release going into that call, and I’m very grateful they gave it. I’m just happy to have left on good terms because they gave me a lot of really cool opportunities and ways to be creative over the years.”
