Matt Riddle was released from WWE in September after five years with the company. Riddle’s run in WWE was filled with a lot of controversies, but his release came at a time that major company-wide layoffs due to the WWE-UFC Endeavor merger were taking place. Prior to that, Riddle had just made headlines for an incident at the John F. Kennedy International Airport. According to reports, sources within WWE believed Riddle had “burned through too many chances while in WWE.” He’s a five-time champion including a former United States Champion and WWE RAW Team Champion with Randy Orton.
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On December 21 the wrestlers who were let go in September were officially able to start wrestling again and Riddle soon popped up in MLW and New Japan Pro Wrestling. Riddle recently opened up about his release from WWE, noting that he doesn’t have any hard feelings toward them. On the most recent episode of The Kurt Angle Show he dove into it further, agreeing that the merger could have played a part in his release from the company. “I think that definitely didn’t help things,” Riddle said. “I know me and Dana White don’t have the greatest relationship and I know he’s definitely a big part of that. And yeah, it definitely played a part. Also, I know they were making budget cuts regardless and I was getting paid quite a pretty penny.”
Riddle also claims that he had meetings with John Laurinaitis about a potential pay raise around the time when he was teaming with Orton. “I don’t know if it was right before RK-Bro or right after, (John) Laurinaitis pulled me into the office and I thought I was in trouble,” Riddle continued. “I was like, ‘Aww, You know, I didn’t get my vaccine yet.’ And I was like, ‘Oh man…’ and [I] went in there, like, ‘Hey, we want to give you a raise’ and they gave me a substantial raise and it increased every year and this year, I was gonna get paid a million a year. I was at 750, and I mean last year, I cleared my bucket. I did extremely well. So I think that was a big contributing factor. I was gonna get paid a million dollars starting next year.” (h/t: POST Wrestling)
