No matter how things shake out for AJ Francis or for any of his former allies, the group itself will always be something he holds close to his heart.
“The cool thing is that, for me, Hit Row was my brainchild from my first run on the indies before I got to WWE where it was called The Row,” Francis explained. “And it was cool because it completely changed Swerve’s character,” he noted specifically, hinting at a reconnection for Strickland to his hip-hop roots. “It gave us opportunities to be on TV.”
After being moved to “SmackDown” as part of the 2021 WWE Draft, however, things didn’t plan out quite as anyone had foreseen. With the COVID-19 pandemic in full force, all four members were released within a shade over a month, and though they were brought back — save for Strickland, who went to AEW — the faction’s blueprint never came to fruition.
“Obviously, we went to ‘SmackDown’ and [everything] changed but I’m grateful that an idea that I created was good enough that it wasn’t really changed at all,” Francis said.
The hands-off approach to an independent concept doesn’t always happen in WWE, historically, and while Francis is proud of that, he doesn’t understand the lack of opportunity the group got, especially from a speaking perspective.
“I was on ‘NXT’ for four months,” he detailed. “I was on ‘SmackDown’ for almost two years, and I had more promos on ‘NXT’ than ‘SmackDown.’ The Hit Row logo has a microphone in the middle of it and we never got it. Me not getting a microphone for more than 15 seconds in two years is a travesty of justice. And I say it all the time, I’m the best promo in this business. If anybody thinks that I’m not, feel free to tell me I’m wrong.”
