WWE Releases Controversial Former NXT Champion

WWE released six NXT wrestlers — Alexander Wolfe, Ezra Judge, Skyler Story, Vanessa Borne, Jessamyn Duke and Kavita Devi — along with a pair of referees on Wednesday. But the cuts reportedly did not stop there, as PWInsider’s Mike Johnson is reporting via multiple sources that former NXT North American Champion Velveteen Dream (Patrick Clark) was released as well. Once seen as one of the brightest young stars in all of NXT, Dream found himself surrounded in controversy last year when he was accused on two separate occasions of sexual misconduct.

Dream was off television from May to August last year, reportedly recovering from injuries suffered in a car accident. Triple H repeatedly defended Dream in interviews, saying that WWE had conducted investigations into his accusations and found nothing.

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.”

But when asked about Dream’s status days before NXT TakeOver: Vengeance Day in February, HHH had no update. By that point, the former NXT North American Champion had been off TV for two months.

“There’s really nothing to add with Velveteen Dream, we’ve gone over it a million times. He’s still training, he had a bit of a physical thing for a bit but he’s still there, still with us, still PC, still training, still on the roster,” he explained.

Fightful‘s Sean Ross Sapp quickly followed with more details