Roderick Strong Told His Mother He'd Quit WWE NXT

Following the break-up of The Undisputed ERA, Roderick Strong "resigned" from WWE NXT. The Master Of The Backbreaker had been used as the third wheel in the Adam Cole-Kyle O'Reilly feud and he said at the time that he was done with the company.

Strong, of course, didn't depart WWE and he resurfaced on the black and gold brand two months later as the leader of Diamond Mine.

Strong reflected on "quitting" NXT during a chat with Fightful and the former North American Champion revealed he told his mother that he had genuinely left WWE.

"I did (quit). To me, I did, and I was done. Honestly, there's a huge influence from Shawn Michaels, but Jamie Noble was one of the first people to tell me, 'If it's real to you, it's real to everybody else.' In my head, I had (just quit). It's one of those situations where the highlight was on Kyle and Adam, but the competitor in me wants to be a part of that, but there wasn't an opportunity at that time. For me, this gave me a chance to distance myself, decompress and really think about what I wanted to do," Strong said.

"I've been in a wrestling ring for 25 years. Thankfully, I was gone for a while and this opportunity that was coming about was with the right people and obviously, I could get the spotlight for myself, which I feel I deserve and worked very hard for, along with that, I can bring some other guys into that spotlight and get that on them and pass it on and transfer a lot of this stuff. It gives more value to my career than just my matches. I told my mom I quit, my dad, my family. I was like, 'We'll see what happens down the road.'"