WWE announced back on April 15, one year to the date after they cut more than 30 wrestlers and furloughed dozens of backstage and office employees, that it would be releasing 10 wrestlers from the Raw and SmackDown rosters. That list was highlighted by a potential world champion in Samoa Joe, a promising young star in Chelsea Green and two fan favorites in The IIconics. But the budget cuts didn’t stop there, as the promotion released another round of wrestlers — this time comprised NXT stars and WWE Performance Center trainees — earlier this week. The latest name to be confirmed was controversial former NXT North American Champion Velveteen Dream on Thursday.
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So is the wave of releases over? According to The Man Men Podcast‘s Andrew Zarian, maybe not. Zarian reported on a recent episode that a few wrestlers from the NXT UK roster could be getting cut in the near future.
Here’s the full list of everyone WWE has released since the start of April:
- Andrade (who requested his release)
- Samoa Joe
- Peyton Royce
- Billie Kay
- Mickie James
- Chelsea Green
- Tucker
- Kalisto
- Wesley Blake
- Bo Dallas
- Mojo Rawley
- Alexander Wolfe
- Ezra Judge
- Skyler Story
- Vanessa Borne
- Jessamyn Duke
- Kavita Devi
- Drake Wuertz and Jake Clemons (referees)
With the exception of Andrade, all of the main roster wrestlers who were cut have to wait until their 90-day “No Compete” clause expires before they can sign with any other major promotion. The NXT wrestlers and PC trainees reportedly only have to wait 30 days.
Dream’s release was perhaps the most noteworthy from this past week. The former champ was once regarded as WWE’s most promising young star, but was accused on two separate occasions last year of sexual misconduct. Despite that, Triple H repeatedly defended him when he returned to television last August.
“You know, in this day today, accusations are made and you take them all very seriously,” Triple H explained in an interview with CBS Sports last August. “You look into them the best you can, and you find out what is there and what isn’t. In this situation, [Clark] was also involved in a car accident. That’s what took him off TV. In the moment, all this other stuff happens and you look into it and you find that there is a situation that people bring to everyone’s attention, you look into it and find that it is what it is and there’s nothing there.
“Everything that we have done, we are comfortable with him continuing to do what he does and everything else. But he had a car accident. It stemmed down to people thought we removed him from TV for different reasons. We didn’t. He was in a car accident,” he continued. “Once he was medically cleared to be able to return to the ring from his car accident, we continued forward the way we did. We looked into what was there and we didn’t find anything.”
