TKO has made some interesting changes since taking over WWE, and the current speculation is that they have asked the company to drop the wage bill. This was the main reason for the recent batch of releases, but it seems that this isn’t the only change they have made.
According to a report by The Wrestling Observer, there were a number of WWE stars who pushed for a no-cut clause to be added to their contracts, but this was rejected.
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“I believe that there may be one or two guys with no-cut contracts in WWE, but it’s very, very few. And I know top guys who tried to get no-cut contracts, and they were told no, as they’re told, ‘But we’re never gonna cut you.’ But they still wouldn’t put it in writing,” Dave Meltzer said.
A no-cut contract would give stars job security, and it would mean that they wouldn’t be able to release them mid-way through. The issue here is that the company can’t give that kind of security to everyone on the roster, as it appears that only a handful of stars have been handed this kind of deal.
The New Day recently negotiated a deal to be released from their WWE contracts
It seems that TKO has restructured a number of WWE deals, and this has caused some backlash from the current roster. This past weekend, it was revealed that Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods had been approached with the newly restructured deals. Despite the duo being under contract until 2030, it seems that some changes were made and this led to the two stars instead negotiating a release four years early.
The duo still has to sit out a 90-day release clause, the same as the stars who were released following WrestleMania last month, but they chose to walk away, which is a different scenario.
JC Mateo and Tonga Loa were also released by the company this past weekend. It seems that TKO’s push to reduce the wage bill continues, and it appears to be aimed at the SmackDown brand.
SmackDown should make its return to the two-hour format in June, which would leave many of the current stars without a place on the show.
Edited by Phillipa Marie