WWE WrestleMania transcends the company that promotes it. For decades now, “WrestleMania weekend” has been treated like a professional wrestling music festival of sorts, with companies from across the globe flooding whichever city WWE is presenting the Showcase of the Immortals in. Established promotions like Ring of Honor and New Japan Pro Wrestling have held arena shows during the weekend, while smaller independent companies like GCW and Pro Wrestling NOAH have flocked to Mania-based cities for their own events. Beyond the non-WWE wrestling that goes on, merchandise companies also run events during the weekend, with Big Time Collectibles already confirming their presence at WWE WrestleMania 39 weekend.
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Big Time Collectibles had planned to bring in John Laurinaitis for an appearance, even announcing the former WWE Head of Talent Relations’s presence on social media. That appearance has now been cancelled due to “only negative feedback.”
“Yesterday we announced John Laurinaitis would be doing an appearance with Big Time Collectibles. Upon announcement we received only negative feedback,” Big Time Collectibles’s Bobby Fulton wrote on Twitter. “After much consideration we have decided to not work with him. We apologize to those that were offended by us working with him.”
Laurinaitis was fired from WWE this past summer as a result of his involvement in the Vince McMahon misconduct investigation, which alleged that the former WWE Chairman paid millions of dollars in hush money to former employees that he was having affairs with. Laurinaitis himself was also accused of misconduct, with reports saying McMahon passed off one of his affairs to him “like a toy.”
This past summer ended Laurinaitis’s 21-year tenure with WWE, as he had been with the company since 2001. While McMahon has been sporadically spotted since his WWE retirement, Laurinaitis has largely been absent from the public eye.
