The WWE is changing forever, and it doesn’t seem like anything or anyone can stop it.
TKO is the umbrella company for WWE and UFC, and they’re changing how things work in a company that has done things differently for over 40 years.
For decades, the WWE was seen as a family business, run by Vince McMahon and his kin, with that extending to the actual roster of wrestlers.
Now, though, with McMahon ousted and TKO in charge, the company seems to be basing its decisions solely on profits, as it is beginning to cull veterans who have been wrestling for WWE for nearly two decades.
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Over the weekend, two of the most tenured wrestlers in the WWE, Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods, left the company following multiple reports that TKO asked the pair to take major pay cuts to reconstruct their contracts.
The tag team declined and left, leaving a sense of anxiety that if they could be discarded, so could possibly anyone in the building.
Per Mike Johnson of PWInsider and Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful, two of the leaders in the pro wrestling news space, Kingston and Woods weren’t the only talent asked to take pay cuts over the past week.
Sapp confirmed that multiple people within the WWE were asked to restructure their contracts to take less pay.
This comes on the heels of what seems to be a new direction TKO is taking the WWE in: doubling (and possibly tripling) down on their developmental system in Florida. The WWE has found numerous talents through its NIL athlete program, which has recruited remarkable collegiate standouts and molded them into marketable stars through NXT and into the main roster.
Two stars in particular, Oba Femi and Trick Williams, have been at the forefront of WWE’s promotional blitz the past few months and are consistent faces in upcoming premium live events.
The days of a wrestler, aside from the top ticket and merch sellers, lasting a decade or more in the WWE might be over.
And if that is where the WWE is heading, we’ll look back at Woods and Kingston’s departures as one of the true first dominios to fall in this seismic shift.
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