Bryan Danielson on recent WWE cuts—Criticizes ex-Employer for Releasing Talent when Profits were Up

The professional wrestling industry and its fans are still reeling from the massive cuts made to the WWE roster on the 4^th of November. Nia Jax, Ember Moon, Karrion Kross and Harry Smith were all released amongst a plethora of others.

Really, since the pandemic began, this occurred a few times and the shocks just kept coming as time went on…culminating in the aforementioned recent releases. And the rumor is, WWE still isn’t done.

Bryan Danielson sat down with MMAFightingonSBN and let everyone know just how he feels about the recent releases. Here’s some of what he said:

“…In some ways, I get it. In some ways, I feel like it’s not right. It’s hard because my father-in-law (John Laurinaitis) is head of talent relations and he is the one who has to call them all…One of the things that I’ve always had a hard time with, and I’ve been fired from WWE twice, so I kind of get this; it’s one thing if somebody does something bad…On the flip side, if they’re only firing you because of budget cuts when they’re profitable than ever, I just don’t think that’s right.

They realized: ‘AEW can’t sign all these people,’ so now the people that have too many high-end contracts, if they feel like they are getting paid more than they should be getting paid, they’ll let them go. You offered them a contract to be with you for three years, if you overpaid them, that’s your bad and you’re still a very profitable company.

I love Vince McMahon and have learned so much from him, but companies are not people. Corporations are their own people but for whatever reason, even good people make decisions that benefit a company that hurt the people that have worked so hard for the company.

I kind of just accepted that that’s what it was, except now I work for AEW. Tony Khan, he’s only let go of three people since the pandemic started and they were all disciplinary reasons. Until I saw that and dealt with that, I always thought (WWE’s way) was unfair, except Tony Khan came in and he doesn’t do that. AEW from a money standpoint makes way less money than WWE. Things like that led me to want to go to AEW as well.”

via MMAFightingonSBN /cultaholic.com (Transcription)

Danielson was reluctant to let one and all know just what he thought about WWE when he first premiered with AEW, but he seems more comfortable to speak his mind now and call a spade a spade, as the saying goes. It’s refreshing and can only help the business.

We more than appreciate his honesty and it can perhaps shed a light on just how WWE works from the inside, and all in all, it’s a landscape that’s starting to look like it’s covered in a sheet of thin ice, where every member of the roster must tread carefully. Not the ideal working place, it would seem, and as Danielson’s statements would suggest.

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