Sources told https://fightfulselect.com/ that on the day of the mass releases, WWE approached numerous talent and asked them to take pay cuts in order to remain with the company. Several of them that we heard about were given two days to make that decision.
So it wasn’t just New Day.
Two frelling days, that’s insane, “hey take this pay cut or your fired, let me know tomorrow bitch.” This is a high pressure situation where the deadline helps panic them into taking the half pay before they can figure out their situation and finances, IMO.
I think it’s worth remembering that the WWE we watched prior to 2024 is not the same company we see now. It’s owned by private equity, whose sole job is to squeeze all the pennies out of everyone’s loafers and then likely sell the company off. The old company was problematic in some rather extremely disgusting ways, but this TKO, it sucks all the joy out of professional wrestling and just barely remembers how to be a little sports entertaining.
Yikes. What’s the point of being a contract worker if the contracts only go one way?
I know, right? WWE’s contracts have always been one-sided in this way, but for them to so blatantly make this move to squeeze talent is a new low even for them.
Meanwhile the top execs are getting paid triple.
I said this somewhere else but you just KNOW the wrestler from when this story broke the other day was Matt Cardona. I just guarantee it was him. Dude has been fighting for so long just to get a phone call from someone at WWE you know he’s taking paycuts to stay there.
If it were Cardona, I wouldn’t completely blame him, on the road with WWE at half pay is still on the road with his wife, I’d rather be with my spouse than passing them in the night on non-tour days.
Yet, I disagree it was him, I lean way more into it was Miz. Miz always wanted to be in WWE, his whole thing on Real World was wanting to be a WWF wrestler. He took shit from the locker room nobody should because he wanted it so bad, WWE made him a ton of money, gave him fame far beyond what MTV did, and led him to his wife, he genuinely seems to enjoy his ambassador stuff he does for them, the elbows they help him rub with are a bonus that helped him get the Gladiators thing, I just think the evidence is more Miz centered than Cardona.
I’ve also seen it speculated it could be Sami Zayn and/or LA Knight. They were both poised to get pushed to the moon within the last year, but WWE never pulled the trigger on either of them and let them slide back down the card.
