Baron Corbin said his WWE departure may have been the best thing to happen to his career, telling Busted Open that the time away forced him to rebuild every part of his game.
Corbin was on the WWE roster from 2012 until his contract expired in November 2024. He returned to the independents under the name Bishop Dyer before coming back to WWE earlier this year, and he won the United States Championship at SummerSlam.
“That’s the most stress and nervousness I’ve had in a day in a long time. It was the combination of a lot of things. Coming back, I took that year and a half, and I elevated everything I did, whether it was in the ring, in jiu-jitsu, personality, the ability on a microphone. I kept to that grind.”
“I think when you’re doing it without that big machine behind you, when you’re having to go to different shows, it’s a testament to how much you love it and where your passion is. If you want to get better without the help of that machine and you’re doing it on your own, I think you can grow exponentially.”
Corbin said the run taught him humility, pointing to booking his own dates, setting his own price, working rings of varying size, and arriving at buildings with no security and no assigned parking.
“It made me appreciate everything I had so much more. When I was in that arena this weekend, I’m just looking at the size of it and going, ‘How could I have ever taken these moments for granted?'”
