Steve Maclin: IMPACT Wrestling Wanted To Sign Me During My 90-Day Non-Compete Clause, ‘All I Want To Do Is Work’
Photo Credit: Steve Maclin / Twitter
Forgotten no more.
Steeve Maclin, formerly known as Steve Cutler, has arrived in IMPACT Wrestling, and the former Forgotten Son is ready to seize the opportunity.
During an appearance on Tommy Dreamer’s “House of Hardcore Podcast,” the ECW legend explained how he immediately admired Maclin’s optimistic, unassuming nature the first time he met him. He also noted that after they first met each other, Dreamer knew that he wanted to “take care of” Maclin.
“I had never met you, I don’t think, before any of this,” said Dreamer. “You came to IMPACT, like you said, just to get away, we’re just talking. Two northeast guys, we’re talking football. Never once did you like come across like, ‘I’m here because I want to get a job here.’ You just wanted to be around the boys, be around a different system.
“And I’ll never forget, we were just sitting there talking, it was the first time I’m meeting you. And then I was just like alright, so when’s your release up, all that stuff. And you were leaving and I was like, ‘You’ll be okay, man, you’ll be alright.’ You’re like, ‘Yup, I know man.’ And right then and there, I was like I like this guy. I like this guy a lot. I was like don’t worry man, I’ll take care of you. Just like that.”
Dreamer then described how Scott D’Amore, the Executive Vice President of IMPACT Wresling, asked the veteran what he thought about Maclin. Dreamer recalled how he told D’Amore that he’d never really seen Maclin wrestle, but he liked him as a person and knew that he’d be driven to succeed in the wake of his release.
Maclin then described how D’Lo Brown, a member of the IMPACT Wrestling broadcast team and an influential player backstage, recruited him to the company, even before he was technically allowed to do so due to his 90-day non-compete clause. In Cutler’s words, Brown offered him a contract before he was free to sign elsewhere, though he didn’t put pen to paper until he was legally free.
“So what’s funny is, D’Lo kept in contact with me when I came there,” said Maclin. “Because he’s like when’s your date? I was like it’s May 5. So my release date’s then, he called me on the fourth, he said, ‘Hey we want to offer you a contract.’
“So it was the day before, so technically I didn’t sign it until after, but it was just one of those things like so I technically never did not have a job. I’m happy, too because I even got the email from D’Lo just saying, ‘Welcome home.’ And it was a refreshing feeling to me just because, it just felt more accepting than how I was kind of treated at times. I was always treated well but that place is so corporate, and it’s just one of things where it’s, you’re in a pecking order. And you get technically forgotten. It was just one of those moments where it just felt cool. I was like, ‘Alright let’s f—— go.'”
Finally, Maclin shared his excitement about his return to wrestling outside of WWE, as he can now continue to grow away from the promotion’s corporate structure he criticized earlier in the interview.
“All I want to do is work,” said Maclin. “Here I want to do my best, no matter what, but then I also don’t want to change from who I am. And that was the fun sort of the process, too, of just wrestling [and] getting back into it.”
The full episode is available here:
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