Uhaa Nation (formerly Apollo Crews in WWE) isn’t spending his days waiting by the phone, but he’s making clear that if WWE ever calls, the answer would be yes.
The former WWE Intercontinental Champion was released after WrestleMania 42 following an 11-year run with the company.
Speaking with Chris Van Vliet, Uhaa was asked whether he still believes the door is open for a return. He said his answer isn’t really about the company’s plans, but about how he conducted himself throughout his tenure: he always tried to leave places on good terms, never ran into trouble, and never violated company policy.
Because of that track record, he believes he’d be a realistic candidate if WWE ever considered bringing him back, even though he isn’t sitting around anxiously hoping for it to happen.
I do. I feel like… I try to leave the most positive outlook I can no matter where I go. I never got in trouble. I never did anything that was against the company policy or anything like that. So I think if it was, if that option was on the table, I definitely would be… a likely candidate if they were looking at me. I think that option would be there for sure. But it’s not something I’m sitting here just waiting and dying to happen, you know what I mean?
Since his release, Uhaa says he’s leaned into rebuilding parts of his identity that took a backseat during his wrestling career, diving into nutrition and continuing to work toward a master’s degree. He admitted that focus has been so consuming that there are stretches where wrestling barely crosses his mind.
When I first got released, I was doing all these things to try to find who I was… I’ve started with the nutrition and everything. I’m still working on my master’s, so that’s taken up a lot of my time. I’ve dove so deep into that, that I’ve almost forgot that I was a wrestler, you know? It’s crazy to say because that’s a huge part of my life.
Leaving WWE forced a shift in mindset for Uhaa, but he’s chosen to see it as an opportunity rather than an ending. He is applying the same determination that got him into WWE in the first place to whatever comes next, since he recognizes no wrestling career lasts forever.
Even with that broader outlook, Uhaa was clear that turning down a legitimate WWE return wouldn’t be realistic for him. He called his 11 years there something he’s genuinely fortunate to have experienced, said he enjoyed the people he worked with, and described WWE as the pinnacle most wrestlers are ultimately striving toward.
