Video – Al Snow explains Cody Rhodes & others following his advice on how to view WWE

C.M. Punk, Wade Barrett, and Cody Rhodes. What do they have in common? They left WWE on their own, thanks in large part to training advice from Al Snow while in OVW.

“I’m happy for Cody,” Al Snow told Hannibal TV in a new interview. “The reason I’m happy for him is one of the lessons I always tried to tell those guys – make yourself successful enough to where you can get out of the business on your terms.

“Leave when you want to leave the way you want to leave. Not because you have to, or because they released you. Leave on your terms. Be in a situation where you can make the choice.”

Snow also broke down the business relationship between promoter and wrestler, noting wrestlers cannot be fired or hired anyways because they’re not employees. So, if you’re not advancing on WWE TV and not happy with your position in the story, why not leave and go somewhere else?

Snow said one of his frustrations is wrestlers and/or fans seeing WWE as the end-all, be-all destination. Snow foresees Cody wrestling other places, enhancing his own brand/product, and potentially returning down the road to be part of the next wave of WWE storylines.

“Cody could come back, and maybe for Cody it might be the best thing for him (to leave),” Snow said. “The best thing that ever happened for me in my career was to go somewhere else and actually get a chance to reinvent myself and come back, brand-new, as a different product that I can re-sell all again.”

Snow added, “WWE is the biggest stage you can perform on, but if you use the stage correctly, you can now sell your product in other places because you’ve established the biggest audience you could possibly establish. And then you can always come back.

“If you’re not in a place that you want to be in, instead of spinning your wheels, leave. And then at some point another opportunity comes up. That’s the way it works. Wrestlers are jigsaw pieces in a puzzle to be placed in certain places to create a certain picture. And, sometimes, no matter how good you are,  you’re just not the right piece to fit in that picture.”