WWE Releases: Pandemic to Now - Last Updated 29/04/22

[Feargus McReddit]

Apr 29, 2022 19:23:46 GMT -5 Corre.222 said:

If you earnestly want to keep your job in WWE, just say that you want to be released & freed, and Vince/Bruce/Johnny Ace will do the absolute opposite of what you want to really let it be known who's REALLY in power & in charge. Ego must be preserved & protected no matter what, because that's the most important thing you see!

The weird thing is, that doesn’t even seem that consistent themselves.

Be someone who was just in a women’s title match on TV and ask to go? Sure, no problem.

Not be used on TV for weeks, be pitched a storyline that (to put it lightly) doesn’t rub well with you and ask for your release? Nah, keeping you around for a bit.

[Final Countdown Jones]

The high chaos state of WWE right now, where you can be in the middle of a program people like or even fresh off a world title match, and just get cut for "budget reasons" without warning, can't possibly be good long-term for the fanbase's interest. But that's just the norm now. Come watch our show where every few months we'll purge a decent chunk of the cast, which will include people midway through a plotline you enjoy. This won't be an obstacle to your ability to get invested at all.

[BlackoutCreature]

Apr 29, 2022 19:17:31 GMT -5 Tiffany Stratton's Daddy said:

Apr 29, 2022 19:15:51 GMT -5 slickrickstyles said:

Strong is basically done at this point I would assume. He will not be going up to anything unfortunately. Dexter is my biggest shock as he is very good at this gimmick and he has been featured pretty prominently since the switch.

I'm starting to wonder if Strong temporarily becomes the mouthpiece for the Diamond Mine, before he's gone from WWE and joins his three friends at the undisputed #1 wrestling company in the world.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they're trying to transition Strong into like a player-coach role for the PC. He's not gonna be released any time soon, but nobody is ever gonna consider him for a main roster slot either.

[knsffa]

They were not earlier, but as of last hour, released talent from today have had their profiles moved to WWE alumni on dot com.

["Evil Brood" Jackson Vanik]

The Observer Daily Updated noted Persia just bought a house. That really sucks.

[Deleted]

Dexter Lumis? You gotta be kidding me.

[Hypnosis]

Apr 29, 2022 20:30:51 GMT -5 "Evil Brood" Jackson Vanik said:

The Observer Daily Updated noted Persia just bought a house. That really sucks.

Of course WWE would release her at the worst time like with Brandi Lauren.

[Urethra Franklin]

I’m watching Winning Time right now, so I’ll use that as an example.

Imagine if midway through the season, HBO comes to Adam McKay out of the blue and says “We fired the guy playing Magic Johnson. He’s gone.”

The show had previously set up a major plot arc for Magic, but now it needs to be dropped with zero explanation. There will be no mention of him on the next episode. It doesn’t matter that it’s going to make zero sense. He’s gone and forgotten.

Putting aside how insane that sounds, just imagine how insulted the writers, producers and other actors must feel to get blindsided with something like that. You don’t even get the common courtesy of notice to wrap up your storylines. Your plans are garbage now. You’d feel disrespected and probably conclude that this isn’t a great place to work.

Now obviously that’s not an apples to apples comparison, but it’s very similar to what NXT (and RAW and SD whenever it happens on the main roster) is left to deal with now.

A Nash Carter situation is unavoidable. This kind of situation is *completely* avoidable. Morale must be entirely in the toilet when stuff like this happens over and over.

[Deleted]

Lumis is guaranteed to go back to Impact and revive the Sam Shaw persona he was doing. I think Bivens is probably gonna dabble in other things outside of wrestling.

But, man, talk about gutting for no reason.

[Tiffany Stratton's Daddy]

Apr 29, 2022 21:07:05 GMT -5 Urethra Franklin said:

I’m watching Winning Time right now, so I’ll use that as an example.

Imagine if midway through the season, HBO comes to Adam McKay out of the blue and says “We fired the guy playing Magic Johnson. He’s gone.”

The show had previously set up a major plot arc for Magic, but now it needs to be dropped with zero explanation. There will be no mention of him on the next episode. It doesn’t matter that it’s going to make zero sense. He’s gone and forgotten.

Putting aside how insane that sounds, just imagine how insulted the writers, producers and other actors must feel to get blindsided with something like that. You don’t even get the common courtesy of notice to wrap up your storylines. Your plans are garbage now. You’d feel disrespected and probably conclude that this isn’t a great place to work.

Now obviously that’s not an apples to apples comparison, but it’s very similar to what NXT (and RAW and SD whenever it happens on the main roster) is left to deal with now.

A Nash Carter situation is unavoidable. This kind of situation is *completely* avoidable. Morale must be entirely in the toilet when stuff like this happens over and over.

Pretty accurate.

Grant it, it's probably not realistic to give the writers a heads up of people they're doing away with. But this happens EVERY SINGLE TIME budget cuts happen. Prominent people on TV get cut. Makes us, as fans, not want to get invested in a talent or the show. Probably makes the writers less invested in putting forth effort in their job.

That might explain the quality of writing across WWE programming right now.

[Nosnorb]

Has the roster gone from "Lean and Mean" to "Skinny and Pissed" yet?

[nisidhe]

Sadly, we've grown accustomed to roster cuts by now. It feels as though brass are going through a Konmari stage and really beginning to hack bone, hence the increasing use of enhancement talent on the main roster. Clearly, though, one has to question whether WwE is truly interested in ensuring in-ring quality if the cuts are impacting those perceived as among their most talented workers.

This can't be the end, of course, as there are likely others seeing the writing on the wall, and the departures will be far more likely those letting their contracts run out than releases. This will save the company on non-compete pay, but it will also virtually sever the relationship between WWE and the rest of the industry...with little prospect for a reconciliation.

Fortunately, of course, these cuts mean that the talents released can move on to earn likely even more money on tne indies or one of the other major promotions. There is plenty of scope for development outside of WWE, and most promoters will be happy to take most of them on.

It's funny. We're standing on the ridge looking over a restored landscape of pro wrestling - so many promotions making a go of it, so many talents finding steady incomes doing what they love, so many venues making money and filling their booking calendars, so many fans enjoying the smorgasbord of options. Who'd have thought that, rather than competing for those audiences and that level of engagement, the largest promotion on the planet seems to be pulling itself away from the center of it all and sliding itself into irrelevance?

[mistery]

Dave mentioned in the daily update that from what he understands, the Dakota Kai cut was also because "after several main roster tryouts they didn't see her as main roster material" and that they are going to be cutting names who have "long tenures in NXT". Saying that Dakota spending nearly 10 years in NXT sealed her fate apparently. There was a lot of pushback from a lot of the coaches and low/middle management, but the higher ups saw no value in her at all.

Keep in mind not counting Candice since she is on maternity leave and is probably gone soon anyways, Roderick Strong and Io Shirai are the next most tenured talents on the show.

[EoE: Workin On My Night Cheese]

Kai and Bivens could basically pick where they go next. Too good at what they do not to. Lumis I figure could get another run in Impact, Pirotta could be an astute depth pickup somewhere too. The other talents I don’t really see much in, but most of those never even hit TV so nobody saw anything in them good or bad.

[knsffa]

Apr 29, 2022 22:57:02 GMT -5 mistery said:

Dave mentioned in the daily update that from what he understands, the Dakota Kai cut was also because "after several main roster tryouts they didn't see her as main roster material" and that they are going to be cutting names who have "long tenures in NXT". Saying that Dakota spending nearly 10 years in NXT sealed her fate apparently. There was a lot of pushback from a lot of the coaches and low/middle management, but the higher ups saw no value in her at all.

Their loss, someone elses gain. Maybe someday we get Evie vs Io in a match where they are able to just wrestle.

[asuka007]

Apr 29, 2022 22:57:02 GMT -5 mistery said:

Dave mentioned in the daily update that from what he understands, the Dakota Kai cut was also because "after several main roster tryouts they didn't see her as main roster material" and that they are going to be cutting names who have "long tenures in NXT". Saying that Dakota spending nearly 10 years in NXT sealed her fate apparently. There was a lot of pushback from a lot of the coaches and low/middle management, but the higher ups saw no value in her at all.

Keep in mind not counting Candice since she is on maternity leave and is probably gone soon anyways, Roderick Strong and Io Shirai are the next most tenured talents on the show.

That sounds incredibly stupid. But the MR women’s booking has been bad overall for awhile now.

[mistery]

Apr 29, 2022 23:13:45 GMT -5 asuka007 said:

Apr 29, 2022 22:57:02 GMT -5 mistery said:

Dave mentioned in the daily update that from what he understands, the Dakota Kai cut was also because "after several main roster tryouts they didn't see her as main roster material" and that they are going to be cutting names who have "long tenures in NXT". Saying that Dakota spending nearly 10 years in NXT sealed her fate apparently. There was a lot of pushback from a lot of the coaches and low/middle management, but the higher ups saw no value in her at all.

Keep in mind not counting Candice since she is on maternity leave and is probably gone soon anyways, Roderick Strong and Io Shirai are the next most tenured talents on the show.

That sounds incredibly stupid. But the MR women’s booking has been bad overall for awhile now.

They have put all of their eggs in the Ronda and Charlotte stuff on Smackdown despite it being cold, and on RAW Bianca is going to start to rapidly falter. And at this point Rhea being in Edge's spooky faction will likely do way more harm than good.

[theironyuppie]

Apr 29, 2022 23:15:38 GMT -5 mistery said:

Apr 29, 2022 23:13:45 GMT -5 asuka007 said:

That sounds incredibly stupid. But the MR women’s booking has been bad overall for awhile now.

They have put all of their eggs in the Ronda and Charlotte stuff on Smackdown despite it being cold, and on RAW Bianca is going to start to rapidly falter. And at this point Rhea being in Edge's spooky faction will likely do way more harm than good.

I don't disagree about Charlotte/Ronda feeling uninspired in some ways, but it's only really cold among the IWC--the contract signing segment last week did nearly three times as many YT views as anything else on the show.

["Evil Brood" Jackson Vanik]

Apr 29, 2022 23:21:41 GMT -5 theironyuppie said:

Apr 29, 2022 23:15:38 GMT -5 mistery said:

They have put all of their eggs in the Ronda and Charlotte stuff on Smackdown despite it being cold, and on RAW Bianca is going to start to rapidly falter. And at this point Rhea being in Edge's spooky faction will likely do way more harm than good.

I don't disagree about Charlotte/Ronda feeling uninspired in some ways, but it's only really cold among the IWC--the contract signing segment last week did nearly three times as many YT views as anything else on the show.

Segments involving women beating up men usually do big YouTube numbers for...reasons...

[Rave]

Apr 29, 2022 19:40:17 GMT -5 Final Countdown Jones said:

The high chaos state of WWE right now, where you can be in the middle of a program people like or even fresh off a world title match, and just get cut for "budget reasons" without warning, can't possibly be good long-term for the fanbase's interest. But that's just the norm now. Come watch our show where every few months we'll purge a decent chunk of the cast, which will include people midway through a plotline you enjoy. This won't be an obstacle to your ability to get invested at all.

I'm having late Chikara flashbacks, this was a reoccurring issue. The second half of 2017 in particular suffered from it. Of course, that wasn't "budget cuts", that was Mike Quackenbush's assholery driving people away.

I even called it out more than once. It's nigh-impossible to get invested in anything if one doesn't know who's going to be around from month to month, and people certainly aren't going to try.