WWE's Reported Reason Behind Firing Arn Anderson

In the midst of WWE releasing Tye Dillinger, Hideo Itami and TJP on Friday, news broke that the company had parted ways with long-time backstage producer and WWE Hall of Famer Arn Anderson/

The move came as a shock, given that Anderson was reportedly beloved backstage by many of the company's top stars. On the latest episode of Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer claimed via sources that both decisions were made based on how well the two got along with Vince McMahon.

According to Meltzer, Anderson was released shortly after a public disagreement with McMahon.

"Arn got fired. It's an incident, everyone is pretty much keeping quiet on what it was. But it was an incident with Vince," Meltzer said. "I know people who were siding with Arn, I know people who siding with Vince. I don't know the whole details other than something at a house show evidently wasn't handled well. And Arn took the blame for that.

"Arn and Vince were not really on the best of terms," he continued. "There had been a lot of situations over the years, one particular one not too long ago."

Meltzer then added that Anderson's departure was a sign that the company was moving forwards without John Cena as a focal point of the product, given that Anderson had been the backstage agent for Cena's matches throughout the majority of his WWE career.

"It was kind of said to me that this was a real sign that Vince is, I won't say moved on from John Cena, that's obviously not the case. But John Cena was the guy, and when John Cena was the guy and he was there full-time, the feeling is this would not have happened."

Metlzer then said on numerous occasions that Anderson would speak out against McMahon's booking decisions with wrestlers backstage.

In the same week of Anderson's firing, the WWE also opted to bring back Bruce Prichard to join the WWE Creative Team. The former manager has not had a backstage roll with WWE since 2008, and Meltzer speculated on the same episode that hiring Prichard was McMahon's attempt to tap into the company's previous creative success.

"To me, bringing Bruce back shows that Vince is looking for the past," Meltzer said.

Prichard has been running the popular podcast series Something to Wrestle since 2016. While the future of the show is reportedly uncertain, co-host Conrad Thompson told Wrestling Inc. on Monday that the podcast's live shows from March 1 through April 8 would would still go on as planned.