WWE Making Low Return Offers To Recently Released Wrestlers, Former Star Sounds Off

WWE is trying to bring back a number of recently released stars on more company-friendly deals.

A month after WWE released roughly two dozen superstars, Bryan Alvarez of the Wrestling Observer (h/t Wrestling Inc) reports that WWE is making low offers to those stars in an attempt to get them to return to the company: “There have been people who have been released from WWE and they have been offered deals to come back and the offers for them to return are a fraction of what they were making.”

Among the high-profile names who were let go during WWE’s “Black Wednesday” mass release last month are Rusev, Zack Ryder and the duo of Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson, which had just been featured in the critically acclaimed “Boneyard Match” main event at WrestleMania 36. A number of those recently released WWE stars were teased for an appearance at Impact Wrestling’s Slammiversary pay-per-view next month, a list that includes names likes EC3, Eric Young, Mike Bennett, Maria Kanellis and Drake Maverick.

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Maverick, who previously performed for Impact as “Rockstar Spud,” isn’t going anywhere, however. A result of the buzz created by a heartfelt post-release promo and a memorable performance in the NXT Cruiserweight Championship tournament, Maverick was re-signed by WWE and given a contract in an emotional segment on this week’s episode of NXT. With that move, Maverick has become the first released star who inked a new deal to return to WWE after it looked like Sarah Logan might do the same at one point.

With Maverick back under WWE contract, the company is trying to lure back some of the stars it has seemingly had second thoughts about releasing. Alvarez also noted, “The offers that I’ve seen, we may be seeing a fair number of people showing up at Impact. I don’t know that but I just know that based on what I’ve seen – some renewal offers – there are definitely people that would definitely go to Impact Wrestling.”

Exactly how much WWE stars are being offered to return isn’t totally clear, but as Alvarez says, the offers are low enough that many of those stars would likely be making a smarter financial move to choose to sign with Impact Wrestling instead of WWE. Former WWE star Lio Rush—who was among the cuts and has been very outspoken about his tenure in WWE—called the situation involving Maverick “a slap in the face” and said WWE is “making a mockery of legitimate firings” while also ripping the company’s “corporate” mindset:

WWE has still been cutting costs by reducing executive pay and releasing staff members and on-screen talents, and it was recently reported that there has been “no additional pay” for NXT and Performance Center recruits who have been serving as “fans” at the recent Raw and SmackDown TV tapings.

WWE’s mass release of superstars was largely a result of the financial impact of Covid-19, but it was also an unsurprising move after the company shelled out massive deals to lower and midcard talents only to have a big case of buyer’s remorse. Many of those talents who were let go had recently inked big deals with the company, including Anderson, Gallows and the Kanellis duo. At the time, those deals raised some eyebrows as they seemed purely to be a way for WWE to prevent those stars from signing with AEW or elsewhere.

WWE was heavily scrutinized for releasing and furloughing so many wrestlers and backstage officials. Wrestlenomics stated that the “layoffs were morally heartless and economically unnecessary” while it’s been reported that the company’s savings weren’t nearly as much as you might expect. WWE is still expected to achieve record profits even without running another single live event in 2020, which may have caused WWE to backtrack on its original plan to significantly cut costs, although that’s not preventing the company from trying to bring them back on a more favorable deal.

Whether or not those stars choose to re-sign with WWE or make the jump elsewhere is a whole different story, though stars like Rush aren’t thrilled with WWE using a real-life firing to craft a major storyline in NXT.