Former WWE Superstar and the newest signee of Bellator MMA, Jack Swagger was recently a guest on Ring Rust Radio where he talked about his run with the company and more. Below are some of the highlights from his interview:

Signing with Bellator MMA:

“I really like Bellator and them as a company and how they are run. It’s a popular place for fighters to go to. It seems there has been a mass exodus from UFC-controlled contracts and I really like that especially coming from the WWE to have a little more freedom and feel a little more love as a talent. As far as why MMA, I have been a pro-wrestler for 10 years now but an amateur wrestler for 25 years. It’s really who I am and something that has been a part of me. I have been thinking about doing it for a long time and wanting to do it and combat sports is so popular right now. It’s really cool to see independent wrestling and professional wrestling growing and being so cool and MMA is exploding with all this competition. There are so many good rosters and with what these guys are doing in the cage is really phenomenal and cool to watch. It’s an honor to train for and be a part of.”

We The People Chant:

“I’m very honored to be a part of that storyline. It’s definitely one of my best parts of my career. To be able to change from being essentially a bad guy into a really hot babyface overnight is very hard to do. So that proves how special that group was, and that storyline was. Zeb, Lana, Rusev, a special dynamic came together there and it’s hard to replicate. Why they didn’t go further with that I don’t know. I think a little bit was Rusev just debuted and they had plans for him at WrestleMania. They wanted to make that the focus. I don’t know why we parted ways like we did. We could have at least done another pay-per-view and then kept on going. Maybe they just didn’t believe in me as a babyface or think it was that over. I think that’s more of a question for them I guess.”

Pitching Vince McMahon a storyline related to Donald Trump:

“Yeah actually it’s funny because I pitched an angle to Vince. Zeb was away, and I said let’s bring him back and let’s do a Donald Trump angle where we mimic everything he does, says and whatever he tweets. It’s essentially a storyline that would write itself and he wanted to stay away from it. I went to him and said, ‘Hey Vince, how would you like to put Donald Trump in the White House?’ So, maybe that wasn’t the best pitch. I thought it was really something special. I wrote it up and I showed Zeb and he added his little stuff to it and it could’ve really been explosive right now. There’s so much anger towards his tweets, towards him, his behavior, and that would’ve been like electric heat. I can’t even imagine it. It would’ve been good and just for the record, I pitched that in 2015. So as soon as he announced he was running I was like, ‘oh gosh, please let me get on this.’ That’s a great idea like, I got all the moves, I got all the good moves, that’s sad. I’m going to pause and start tweeting and make the whole audience have to read my tweets in order to see what I’m saying while I’m wrestling. You guys are going to have to give up royalties.”