News broke on Tuesday that both WWE executive vice president of talent development Canyon Ceman and backstage producer Sonjay Dutt were gone from the company. But while the Wrestling Observer‘s Dave Meltzer initially reported Ceman had departed, WWE personally reached out to Fightful‘s Sean Ross Sapp to confirm he has not been released. Sapp wrote in a Twitter thread, “WWE reached out and they stated that Canyon Ceman has NOT been let go by WWE. There have been rumors circulating within WWE and the wrestling world over the last two days. We reached out to Canyon last night, as well as two WWE sources, and did not get a response until just now. We’re told Ceman even asked WWE how to go about handling the inquiries of his status with WWE, but we didn’t get a specific response from him.
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“Our requests to WWE didn’t get a response until word made it’s way out, as they don’t typically comment on personnel matters,” he continued. “We’ve been contacted by at least two dozen people in the industry speculating about Canyon Ceman in the last 24 hours, across all major companies. Ceman still scouts for WWE and is in charge of handling a lot of contract negotiations as well.
Sapp broke the Dutt news earlier in the day, confirming he had left the company of his own volition weeks ago. The news comes mere days after WWE’s latest wave of wrestler releases. This time around the names included:
- Fandango
- Tyler Breeze
- Tony Nese
- Ariya Daivari
- August Grey
- The Bollywood Boyz
- Curt Stallion
- Arturo Ruas
- Marina Shafir
- Killian Dain
- Ever-Rise
At this point, WWE has released 40 wrestlers in 2020. Some of the biggest surprises have included Braun Strowman, Aleister Black, Lana, Andrade (who requested his release) and Samoa Joe. However, Joe made his return to NXT two weeks ago and confirmed with Ryan Satin this week that Triple H called him about returning mere hours after his release.
“[John Laurinaitis] called me, and I thought it was a rare call from Johnny. ‘Hey, what’s up, Johnny? How you doing?’ He told me, ‘Hey, listen. We’re going to have to release you from your contract.’ And I said, ‘OK.’ You know, like ‘… cool.’ And ‘Joe, we think the world of you, we’d love to work with you again.’ I was like, ‘All right. No, absolutely, Johnny.’ And, honestly, I did have a bit of an understanding,” Joe said.
“Obviously, at the time, dealing with injuries, coming back, getting ready to get my rehabilitation going and all that stuff, we’re in a pandemic, all this other stuff, so I got it,” he continued. “It wasn’t unexpected. But at the same time, I was relatively calm about it. I’ve kinda been in this situation before. A younger me probably would’ve been really, really freaked out. But at this point, you just roll pivot. That’s really all there is to it when it comes to life in general. That’s kind of the mantra I’ve kept. So at that point, I think I was already kind of in the works on setting up the next framework for whatever else I was gonna do. A few hours later, I get a call from Hunter, and that all pretty much kinda changed.”
