WWE held its latest Performance Center tryout this week, and wound up bringing in a number of noticeable wrestlers from the indie scene as well as a former Bellator MMA Champion and a reality show star. The biggest name at the tryout was Zack Carpinello, better known as 24 from MTV’s Jersey Shore and the boyfriend of cast member Jenni ‘JWoww’ Farley. The two had broken up recently after he had gotten a little too flirty with Angelina Pivarnick at a Las Vegas night club, but the pair confirmed this week that they were back together. Carpinello wrestles as Zack Clayton on the independent scene and has competed in 44 matches in the last five years.
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Other big names included former Bellator MMA Lightweight Champion and UFC Fighter Will Brooks, Titan Games competitor Michael Evans, Stephen Gerard (Stephen Wolf in EVOLVE) and Brandon and Brent Tate. Ring of Honor fans will likely recognize the Tate Twins as “The Boys,” who wrestled alongside Dalton Castle prior to his heel turn earlier this year. The pair’s final ROH match took place in late August.
With AEW now on TNT each week and the popularity of other promotions on the rise, WWE has been focused on keep its roster together by signing many stars to new, long-term, lucrative contracts. However Sunday marked a sudden change in policy for the promotion when WWE announced it had released Luke Harper, Sin Cara and Konnor & Viktor of The Ascension. Harper and Cara had gone public with their release requests, but both were initially rejected.
During a recent media conference call, Triple H criticized wrestlers who choose to post release requests on social media.
“If you have an issue, talk to us,” Hunter said. “If you think ‘oh, I’m gonna go put that on the media’ that’s not a way to go about doing your business. If I had a complaint with a talent, I don’t go on Twitter and complain to them, I speak to them. So I’ve never understood that process.
“But there’s a silliness to it, to me there’s a maturity issue of it’s not how you handle business,” he later added. “Anybody that’s out there that is serious about it that’s talking on the internet, that ain’t the place to do it. We all have phones, we all have cell phones, you handle your business like a professional. Everybody likes to think we don’t stick to the word and everybody likes to say professional wrestlers, the key word in front of that — professional. That’s what we’re trying to change about the business and make people more professional.”
