Ilja Dragunov opens up about why he chose to leave WWE: “There was no intention of the company to let me go. It was an accumulation of a lot of things. Of course, the offering, because we all know at the end of the day, it's a business. But also, it's definitely based on my feeling of how I want to work creatively. I spent most of my twenties in WWE. That's a very, very long time, and the landscape in this beautiful business changed. Everything I knew is that the expiration of my contract came and the negotiations didn't lead anywhere. There was nothing that I felt satisfying. Nothing that gave me the perspective of, 'Oo, I must stick with what I have here.' I had a gut feeling. I think things will work out for me, that I can bet on myself. Change always requires guts. It requires courage. It requires dealing with the possibility that things could not work out your way. It all came down to betting on myself and believing it's going to be all right.”