During an interview with Chris Van Vliet on YouTube, Dolph Ziggler reflected on a time back in 2008, when he went up against Batista and he thought that he would be fired from WWE. 

“A lot of people think that’s the debut but that’s when I come back. I wanna say I wrestle R-Truth as Dolph Ziggler, I think I have a double count out or I roll in and beat Truth… and then I’m not on TV for a month or month and a half and then I come back and it’s against Batista, and I go ‘Oh, this is my last day at work.’”

“If you were a new young guy, you don’t know what’s going on. I don’t have a legacy, I don’t have friends in the meeting, I don’t know what I’m doing. They gave me this weird name that I tried to fight them on and my debut was a count out win against R-Truth, who is beloved, especially by me.”

“If you’re debuting and you’re fighting Triple H and winning, they’ve got plans for you. When you’re debuting against R-Truth, who wasn’t on TV at the time, and you’re barely scraping by and then you go away for a month and they tell me that it’s you and Batista and it’s one segment… lucky for me, Batista is not just a sweetheart, he’s great and wanted to have a good match. So, I just saw that and I go ‘Oh, this is it.’”

“Instead, we have a really fun match. It was like eight or ten minutes but it was kind of a good match, but he’s going on to a pay-per-view in a world title match, so he definitively beats me, totally get that. But I don’t have to check the wanted ads next Monday.”