WWE released over a dozen of its wrestlers on Thursday. Following the company’s sale to Endeavor being made official and its TKO merger with UFC going through, it was widely expected that a number of corporate positions would be let go due to their roles now being duplicated. It came as a bit of a surprise that talent cuts were on the way as well, with veteran stars like Dolph Ziggler and Shelton Benjamin being especially shocking releases. Over the course of Thursday, released talent confirmed their exits on social media, and some shined light on exactly how their firings went down.
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Maximum Male Models Detail WWE Releases
Speaking on Twitch, Mace and Mansoor of the Maximum Male Models provided details regarding how they were notified of their releases.
“We figured they would call us both at the same time. My firing story is, I was driving my beautiful daughter to school. We were going through a dead zone. There is a dead zone between my house and her school. I didn’t get anything,” Mace said. “[Mansoor] had informed me that [he] was fired. I thought I was safe. I had received a text that said, ‘Call me back.’ I called back and it starts off with small talk. I have Twitter. I know why you’re calling. You’re not calling to say hello. That was it.”
“I personally felt like there was a lot of untapped potential. After the time we stopped traveling, when we were banned from TV,” Mansoor added. “Not going to get into that. That’s for my book. Right after the time we stopped traveling, we flew to Stamford to meet with the creative team of Raw and we presented two pitch videos.”
Some of those concepts included “The Fixers,” a tag unit that would have been able to “fix” any issue for WWE stars, as well as “The Answer” which was described as a pyramid scheme for a cult.
“People liked the Fixers idea. One of the directions people thought it could go is we could be Miz’s new stable,” Mansoor continued. “I thought that would have been great. Miz is awesome. He’s always been great to us. I showed him the video and he said it was great stuff. Everyone seemed to like it. It just didn’t pan out for some reason. We weren’t going to stop sending ideas.”
Beyond repackaging themselves completely, Mansoor had one idea within Maximum Male Models that would have echoed a popular gimmick from the 2010s.
“This almost happened, not this angle, but we did almost work with Cody Rhodes. I wanted him to hit me with the Cross Rhodes and it would break my nose. Then, I could do Undashing,” Mansoor said. “I wanted to wear the mask like him and do the angle where I thought I was the ugliest person in the world and a horribly disfigured mutant. Everyone kept saying, ‘We want Male Models to have more edge. We need more aggressive and vicious. What can we do?’ I kept saying, ‘Break my nose. I’m this vicious goblin.’”
For a full list of Thursday’s WWE talent releases, click here.
