In a new interview, former ROH World Champion Jonathan Gresham opened up about the end of his time with the Tony Khan regime, including their infamous meeting which Gresham said got away from him.

Speaking to Nick Hausman, Gresham, currently under contract with Impact Wrestling, detailed the events that led up to his meeting with Khan and title defense against Claudio Castagnoli at last July's Death Before Dishonor and what happened afterward.

“I shouldn’t have yelled or cursed in a professional environment and I deeply regret my behavior. Since then, I’ve gained some introspection through therapy…and self-reflection and I just want to set the record straight," he said.

Feeling blown off

Gresham said he had been trying to meet with Khan and felt that leading up to the meeting, he was being "blown off in different ways." He admitted he maybe shouldn't have expected the same relationship with Khan as he did with previous ROH ownership where communication came more rapidly.

He said he was flown into a show, but never got a time to meet after waiting for essentially three days (fly-in, event day, departure day). The two eventually exchanged messages and Khan suggested meeting another time.

He said he was flown in again for a different show and the same thing happened before he had to hunt Khan down to talk. 

"When I finally get a chance to have a face-to-face with him, he introduces me to someone he is close with and as I go to shake her hand, I turn around and TK, from the way it looked to me, was walking away from me.

"So, at this point, I am thinking to myself, ‘This guy must not respect me at all.’ I just started having things roll around in my mind and I think, at the time, I was my own worst enemy with this. There was a lot of stuff going on personally with me. Nobody but the Progress guys know that my mom had a really bad incident. She was in the hospital for like a week and it was the first time I had ever seen my mom so vulnerable with tubes going through her face and stuff. A lot of this was just me under a lot of stress, I believe. But, I really felt I was disrespected.”

Through therapy and self-reflection, Gresham said he realized he was acting unprofessionally in trying to convey his message, but he felt like there wasn't an interest in him being heard.

"After weeks of feeling like I wasn’t being heard or blown off, I was frustrated, to be honest. All I wanted was to be heard and for the communication to be had. If they had agreed and liked my ideas and what I wanted to say, great, if not, I would have appreciated the time and just accepted the outcome.”

The infamous meeting

Gresham eventually met with Khan prior to Death Before Dishonor which was a surprise because it was unscheduled. 

Before the conversation, Gresham said "had already checked out" and knew he was going to ask for his release. Despite what people think, he said he didn't leave the company because he lost the ROH title to Castagnoli as "that’s just part of business and life in general. You can’t be the champion forever, so, that’s not what it was."

He wanted to publicly apologize to Castagnoli as it was a difficult day for everyone involved. He said after the one-minute match, he wanted to just get out of there, but talked to Castagnoli, William Regal and eventually Khan himself before he did.

"But, before I did get out of there completely, my wife had my bags and stuff, and TK, he didn’t have to, but he came over to me and said some really nice things. He told me that no bridges were burned, he shook my hand and he said he knows that I am not a bad person.

“I can only imagine him dealing with athletes for so long. He kinda understands how things are, how people are. He deals with people from all different backgrounds. I’m pretty sure he probably saw where I was coming from and he just granted me my release. That was it.”

Outside a few texts with QT Marshall, he hasn't had contact with anyone from AEW or ROH since.

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