Top Dolla Describes Hit Row's Hastily Put Together WWE Return

When Paul "Triple H" Levesque was named WWE's Chief Content Office he wasted little time bringing back familiar faces the company had released. Hit Row was among the first. The group was surprisingly let go early into their main roster run on "SmackDown," and one member of the group, Top Dolla, admitted on "Out Of Character with Ryan Satin" that he didn't expect to ever be back.

"I was sitting there like, 'Well, I still want to wrestle,' and honestly I didn't expect that," he said. "I always wanted to wrestle in WWE, and even though I did wrestle on the indies before I got to WWE, that was just me practicing getting reps because I knew once I got a tryout I was going to be in WWE."

Top Dolla achieved plenty in his life away from wrestling, whether that be in American football, music, or television. Because of that, he admitted to questioning whether he wanted to wrestle anymore after his release. However, the buzz of the crowd is something that he's clearly drawn to. 

"I would rather wrestle in front of a crowd of 500 people than when I played football in front of 100,000," he said. "There's no comparison. I felt like, 'You know what, I'm gonna start wrestling again. I'm gonna get back into it and do my thing.'"

Top Dolla recalled watching Dakota Kai make her return to the company at SummerSlam earlier this year, which he thought was "so cool," and it was just over a week later that he got the call himself.

"Low and behold right when I was like, 'There's life after WWE,' WWE called me right back. I was like, 'Just as I think I'm down they pull me right back in.'"

Hit Row's Ashante Adonis, B-Fab, and Top Dolla (the group's fourth member during its initial WWE run, Swerve Strickland, joined AEW) made their returns on the August 12 episode of "SmackDown." Before their comeback, there was a lot of chatter about who could be next, with the classic meme of Levesque as Thanos with an Infinity Gauntlet of wrestlers making the rounds on social media. 

Top Dolla revealed that Levesque personally called him just over a week before they returned to WWE, and wanted to know how quickly the rest of the group could get together.

"I was like, 'You can have us tomorrow if you really want,'" Top Dolla recalled. "We had scheduled a meeting – just the three of us and Hunter – the next day, talking out the steps and the plan, and then a week after that we debuted, it was really fast the turnaround."

While Top Dolla had kept himself busy post-WWE with a variety of projects and several matches on the independent scene he did admit that he "really was in a bad place mentally" in regards to the faction being released. 

"I cannot thank Hunter enough," he said. "For him to on the phone call be like, 'Man, I don't know what happened, and I don't care. You've got a clean slate, you're here now, there's no problem on our end, I hope there's no problem on your end.'"

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit "Out Of Character with Ryan Satin" with a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.