Quincy Elliot ponders WWE dismissal and deals with “Twitter drama”

Quincy Elliot recently reflected on her exit from WWE NXT and the controversy surrounding her online comments. Elliot was released from WWE in September 2023 and they spoke to Developmentally Speaking about their time with the company as well as the backlash surrounding the December 2022 allegations that they used Burner Twitter accounts to make transphobic comments and harass wrestling fans. You can see some highlights below, according to Fightful):

On the topic of “Not being on TV after surgery”: “I was off TV for a while and then there was a lot of drama and I was just all over the place, just circling around and trying to regain the momentum I had.”

On the backlash they received on Twitter that made things even more complicated: “At the time, I was dealing with some Twitter drama that was going around the company. There were a lot of stories being spread that just weren’t true or were being taken out of context. The company had already gotten a negative reaction to that character, so any negative comment on that would make them scratch their heads a little bit, but they tried to let me clear my head, keep working, keep training hard and give me opportunities here and there, but ultimately I feel like NXT started moving towards, I guess you would say, energy and the way they were presenting people was less character-based. A lot of people that were on TV were no longer on TV. It was really just all over the place, but I kept working, kept doing the live events. I started bringing in new ideas. They ran with me as the villain on the live events and stuff. It just stagnated, I just tried to wait for something to happen from January to September when I got released.

“I knew at the time that this character was so new, they put a lot of time and energy into me, so I just tried to make the most of it. I feel like if I had more opportunity to show that, it would have been better. But I’m grateful for what happened. I was able to do a lot more than I ever imagined in wrestling, but it is what it is. I did the best I could. I wasn’t the most mature and I was struggling with a lot at the time. But I tried to make the most of the opportunity, I tried to listen and I was able to do some cool stuff, so I’m not too bitter about it.”

When asked if they saw their release coming: “Oh man, I saw it coming. I was at the Performance Center that day, training, and someone came up to me and said, ‘Hey, man, Dolph Ziggler just got released.’ During training, he said, ‘Mustafa Ali got released.’ I was like, ‘Mustafa is on pay-per-view next month, so I’m definitely out if those guys get released. [laughs]. So it was a depressing day. I was literally at the Performance Center thirty minutes before I was discharged. I drove home and thought to myself, it is what it is. I got the call, they called me and told me I was no longer going to be there. It’s depressing when you’ve worked your whole life toward this, but at the end of the day I feel like everything happens for a reason.”

On dealing with the Twitter “drama”: “I’m honestly proud of myself because I could have crashed and freaked out and said anything and badmouthed people, but I just thought, I’m just going to be grateful for the opportunity. It’s frustrating, but not everyone gets to say they lived their childhood dream, and I got to live my childhood dream for two years. If you told me when I was five years old that I would be in the room with Shawn Michaels talking about creative ideas, I would have ended up being totally confused. It is what it is, but I’m grateful for the opportunity. I feel like I was misunderstood in some ways, and that’s the way the world of pro wrestling is. People come and go. I was just one of those people.”

When asked if they wanted to say something to WWE: “I appreciate it, thank you. I’m very grateful. Thank you. I’m sorry if I’ve caused you anything negative, sorry for the headache or whatever. But thank you, I appreciate it, you changed my life. Even if it was only two years, those two years changed my life, I learned a lot. I learned tools about pro wrestling that I can never explain but I’m grateful for and I’m going to try to pass that knowledge on as best I can and keep it with me. But just thank you. WWE is a business and the business will move on. It’s in the past, it’s been almost a year since I was released, so I’m learning every day to move on.”