On a recent edition of the “Insight” podcast, AJ Francis spoke about Paul Heyman supporting him and Hit Row while he was in WWE. He said,
“Paul Heyman used to stand up for me a lot and Paul Heyman would say, ‘They can’t see the difference between what, like, John Cena and Max Caster and what you’re doing.’ He said, ‘Theirs is like, not comedy, but, kayfabe rap. It’s rap within the wrestling realm. Yours is like actual, livable, breathable hip-hop’ and he said, ‘Because of that, it makes it more real. So if you’re not into that, you can’t understand it.’ So did they want me to not do it? No, they had no problem with me doing it. They just wasn’t gonna put ‘em on TV.
“There’s so many times Paul Heyman would text me, ‘Man, this should be how we start the show tonight.’ I would send him my video I’m doing, I sent him one I did for the Christmas show. He was like, ‘This should start the show tonight…’ Sent him so many different ones that we did and mind you, I never get my flowers, Hit Row never gets our flowers.”
Francis, who competed as Top Dolla in WWE, added that nobody gave Hit Row “our flowers” when a segment with LA Knight went viral. He said,
“When L.A. Knight had that 2 million-view video on YouTube in 24 hours, from the Madison Square Garden dark show, we were in the segment with him. No one ever gave us our flowers for that. I don’t know how many times that happened on WWE. Not just with L.A. Knight but just on WWE YouTube since, but we never got flowers for that.”
Francis competed in WWE as Top Dolla. He, alongside the rest of Hit Row, was released in 2021 but the group (minus Swerve Strickland) was rehired in 2022.
AJ Francis was among those released from WWE in September 2023. He has since joined TNA Wrestling and debuted at Hard to Kill 2024.
