Steve Maclin has offered new details about the creative issues that led him to request his release from TNA, which ended his five-year run with the company in June.
As previously reported, Maclin’s frustration with the creative team was already known.
In a recent interview with TSN, however, he explained that he was constantly pitching ideas and that few of them ended up being used.
“I kind of felt towards the end of my fifth year I was just spinning the wheels where I was throwing ideas to creative and they were taking them and then nothing would come of it. Even when I became International Champion [in April of 2025], it was like, ‘All right, cool, where are we going to? Am I going to Mexico, Japan? How are we going to make this title mean something?’ Every pitch that I threw just never came to fruition like I imagined.”
“It just felt like I was always fighting an uphill battle where I just folded every time, like, ‘Okay, cool, whatever you guys want, then.’ For me, that’s not something I like to do, especially when I try to put every bit of me into a story to better the product, to better the company and to better the person I’m in the ring with.”
Maclin also said he tried to channel some of that real-life frustration into his feud with Mike Santana. The idea was to use his own unhappiness with how things were going behind the scenes to strengthen the storyline, and to leave TNA with something meaningful in the event of departures from the roster. But according to Maclin, many of those suggestions did not go anywhere either.
The TNA International Championship that Maclin mentioned was created in 2025. He became the inaugural champion on April 17 of that year by defeating Eric Young and AJ Francis, and he later won the title a second time by beating Frankie Kazarian at Bound for Glory. At the time, Maclin said publicly that he wanted to take the title to promotions such as AAA and Pro Wrestling NOAH.
Maclin requested his release from TNA in early June. The company confirmed his departure on June 7, effective immediately. His final match came against Mike Santana, with the TNA World Championship on the line.