This is going to be a bit of a different read today. Now, usually I try to keep things generally positive on the blog I feel like. Outside of an occasional wrestling match or horror movie that I didn’t necessarily care for or have my disgruntlements about; I’m not much into the pessimistic content creation so I just try to talk and write about things that I generally like and enjoy within my interests. That’s been getting awfully hard though these last few weeks within the world of the WWE because there’s been roster cuts, talent being asked to take significant pay cuts, and more and more shady corporate business tactics stacked on top of each other and it’s setting the internet wrestling sphere on fire. It’s all just getting me thinking bigger picture about all the nonsense within the last few months in WWE and I’m beginning to boil over. So, head down this ranty rabbit hole with me and please, bear with me here. So, within the past couple weeks we’ve seen WWE cut Kairi Sane, Aleister Black, Zelina Vega, all of the Wyatt Sicks, Motor City Machine Guns, and countless others. Then within the last few days they cut JC Mateo and Tonga Loa from the MFTs, and Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods (the freaking New Day!) mutually decided to part ways. It just feels like they’re keeping the door held open and ushering people out at this point.
The New Day one is a shame to me. I’m not necessarily worried for them because they’re a massive name when it comes to tag team wrestling and they’ll be able to be a big name and carry out some dream matches wherever they choose to go, and honestly it felt like they had ran their course in WWE and achieved all they were probably going to achieve. Kofi has just been around in WWE legit since I’ve been a kid and I never imagined or envisioned the day that he wouldn’t be, and hell Xavier has been there longer than almost anyone on the current roster himself. Where I have some mixed feelings and where things don’t necessarily sit right with me is that word swirling around is WWE and TKO themselves have been asking some talent (some pretty big-name talent as well apparently) to take major pay cuts, sometimes up to 50% of their overall deal! That’s basically only understandable for a company that’s really struggling and trying to stay above water, but for a company that’s constantly bragging about being “bigger than ever” and “being on fire” that’s pretty damn shady. I’ve seen reports that WWE as a company earned over 1.7 BILLION dollars last year, and that was UP from the over 1.3 in 2024, and you’re asking talent to take pay cuts for you? Especially talent like the New Day that are loyal and established workers for the company and have been there forever, that’s just messed up. TKO is running WWE like any corporation would run a business, just a heartless, soul-less money-making machine. Bad enough to plaster ads in every possible space in and around the ring and ringside area, and attempt to squeeze every cent out of fans that they can, and be consistently pricing some of the die-hard fans and families out of tickets to live events like they do, but they’re not even showing as much appreciation or loyalty to their wrestlers as they should from the sounds of it.
That’s what’s bad too. They’re making money out of us hand over fist, I’m guilty of it as well because I buy merch and tickets to events because I love this stuff, but at the end of the day they’re recording record profits and not even giving us their best attempt possible. Not saying I’m not enjoying some stuff on the weekly show either throughout the last year plus, I definitely have enjoyed things but in other aspects they’ve been lazy or just simply haven’t tried. The tag team division is constantly floundering and now they’ve just let go of a handful of their tag teams so that’s not going to help things in the slightest. I don’t know how the hell they dropped the ball with The Wyatt Sicks so bad! They were one of my favorite things on the show and my favorite faction in the company. When The Wyatt Sicks debuted and had their program with Chad Gable and American Made that was dark and spooky and absolute cinema and I loved every single minute of it and then it just felt like they didn’t know what the hell to do with them after that, so they just sent them to the Smackdown tag division to die. Felt similar to the way they treated Bray Wyatt back in the day, not that they ever killed his character, but just the not knowing what to do with the darker and more nuanced characters. I’ve also heard reports that a higher up in TKO doesn’t like dark/spooky characters so they’re doing away with a lot of that, and if that’s true, my god what a gut punch to me! I know I’m a bit biased as a horror fan and a wrestling fan, but the spooky characters offer something different and interesting in the world of wrestling, and I love having them around. I mean, The Undertaker is one of the best characters in pro wrestling history!
They have a plethora of amazing women’s talent on the roster as well and more and more coming up from NXT all the time and most of the time it feels like outside of a handful of them at a time, they just don’t know what the hell to do with them all. They need to start more individual women’s feuds that don’t involve belts or anything and just let these girls cook! Perfect example of this, how in the hell are you NOT going to have the 2 women that successfully defended the Women’s World Championships at last year’s Mania even on the card at this year’s Mania?! Literally how in the hell does that make any sense. Tiffany and Iyo were both in the lead up commercials too which leads me to believe stories got scrapped or something happened, but that’s just insane to me. Maybe it’s for the best though because none of the women on this year’s Mania card really got the time that their matches rightfully deserved. That’s another major complaint about the TKO era for a lot of people; this year’s WrestleMania was one of the most ad polluted WrestleManias of all time and it wasn’t even close. It felt like so many matches got cut shorter than they should’ve so we could see the commercials for 2k26 and Slim Jim and Hulk Hogan’s doc for the 17th time. They’re just caring about their pocketbooks more than the actual wrestling it feels like at times and it’s a detriment to not only the fans, but the talent as well. Wrestlers don’t make what a lot of other athletes make anyways, not even close, and now they’re being asked to take pay cuts or cut matches short or not getting the TV time to showcase their chops that they deserve or whatever it may be while you’re openly bragging about record profits and it’s going to lead to a lot of disgruntlement all around. All I’ll say is as fans we care about these men and women we see put their bodies on the line for us on television MUCH more than we care about Nick Khan and Ari Emmanuel and all these other suits that made wads of money last year while asking their talent to take significant pay cuts and not getting them on TV.
I’m going to stop with the negativity now. I’ll be back to review Backlash this weekend and it’ll be business as usual, I just felt like I needed to get that off my chest. The sad part is, I could rant about more when it comes to some of the recent storytelling and things like that as well, but I felt like I’d ranted enough and got my main point across anyways. What do you think? Is TKO doing a good job or are they running things into the ground? Anyways, that’ll be all for this one folks! Make sure to come back to the page or website often to check for new weekly content over WWE, horror movies, and more! Thank you and until next time, be good to one another!
