Yeah but… twitch… she’ll be in a homeless shelter soon.
A LOT of the wrestlers are living on relatively moderate income. Paycheck to paycheck, I don’t know…they aren’t on welfare but I’d guess the disparity of income between top names and most names is wider than you’d think.
Paige is a weird one. She cannot cry poor when she flaunts her wealth. She has every right to leave the company if she feels they deprive her of her life. And yet she has a right to Twitch. I just think she has really presented a terrible case for herself that doesn’t garner sympathy unless you blindly believe what she says without applying much thought to it. Which is likely most of Twitter 
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Here’s the reality, wealth is relative. If I had to guess, I’d say the average person on this board has a net worth that is either 5 or 6 figures. With that said, its very hard to expect people who have a net worth of 5 or 6 figures to “feel bad” for someone crying about their income when their net worth is 10 times more.
I would guess the same logic would apply to Paige likely not feeling bad for Triple H if he complained about loosing money, Triple H not feeling bad for the Rock, Rock for McMahon, McMahon for Bezos etc.
My point is even though Paige is right in that WWE is in the wrong, publicly she isn’t going to get a lot of sympathy. Its the same thing as when a pro athlete complains about being underpaid, but is earning millions per year. Even if they are “right”, it typically pisses off fans.
Some examples of net worth (Again, this is all from Google so take with a grain of salt)
Paige has a net worth of 3.5 million
AJ Styles has a net worth of 6 million
Undertaker has a net worth of 22 million
Triple H has a net worth of 40 million
John Cena has a net wroth of 60 million
The Rock has a net worth of 320 million
Vince has a net worth of 1.7 billion
Mark Cuban has a net worth of 4,2 billion
Jeff Bezos has a net worth of 184.1 billion
I’m assuming the Cuban and Bezos numbers would be easier to get a clear read on, but those algorithmically generated “Celebrity X is worth Y million” sites are way, way off. They’re based on a weird combo of Google indexing, presence on streaming platforms, and other popularity indicators which are often wholly removed from actual income. I’ve had a couple of musician friends post and laugh about their own such pages, pointing out that they’re inflating their worth by ten times or more.
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Yeah those estimates are sketchy. If you took mine and my wife’s salaries, value of our house and cars and the money in our retirement funds, there’s a chance that we’re technically “millionaires”.
But I just had to unexpectedly buy a new oven and laptop in the same week, and I’m pretty close to looking for change under the couch cushions.
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I did say with a grain of salt, but I would assume that the bigger the celebrity, the more accurate the info would be. Its also reported (again on Google) that she currently makes 200K/year.
Keep in mind, Paige has wrestled with WWE for almost 10 years, and she was on Total Divas for quite a few seasons. I have to imagine that Total Divas money is pretty good. Regardless, my point is that the average fan is not going to feel sorry for her. If anything, the people saying anything are likely those who have gripes with WWE in general.
Well ya, we’re talking net worth here, not disposable income.
I just don’t feel bad for Paige because she can leave WWE. Regardless of her wealth, how does somebody expect sympathy when they say this company has taken everything from her and she still stays.
I actually think people tend to over-estimate what net worth is. The owner of the Houston Rockets is worth ~Billions but in reality it’s entirely on paper and in assets that are mostly non-liquid unless he sells all his businesses.
Now if we want to discuss living above ones means in relation to wealth, entirely different. And I have little sympathy for people claiming to be broke or poor living in a ~1M home with a $700 car payment a month.
Regardless, Paige gets no sympathy from me because again, she can just leave.
You’re not wrong, Pac did it. I’m sure they would let her out of her contract if she said she wouldn’t go to AEW.
Ahhh so here is a question (maybe with no answer): WHY does a company like WWE care whether Paige, an inactive wrestler, wants to go to AEW? Like in the grand scheme of WWE and all their power and money, is Paige moving the needle? I always found this to be a huge disconnect between Vince viewing his company as a wrestling company and investors not giving a shit about whether a talent is going to help “pop a rating” on another network. Why stomach the bad press of Paige being mad when at the end of the day, the upside is limited in scope compared to the overall business.
Vince has been on Wall Street so long it’ maddening how he still runs things like a territory.
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@kliq Yeah, true. I mean, on paper baseball players are often paid in a way that’s completely incommensurate with the profits they generate for team owners, but it’s really difficult to get fans to care about that when all they know is that Mookie Betts just signed a $365 million extension while - ignoring COVID - working and middle class families are being priced out of being able to attend games live (and that’s, again, a fight that a somewhat strong ballplayer’s union has been dealing with for decades).
@MJfromNJ Yeah, this is (theoretically) the flip side of the painful truth that John’s always trying to remind us of, that the investors and callers on the meetings don’t actually give a shit about how Roman Reigns’ scripted promos are damaging Raw or how criminal Ricochet’s mismanagement is. If those sorts of character/content issues which drive hardcores like us nuts don’t actually matter at the macro buisness level, then why the hell is Vince micromanaging his talent as if everything depends on someone being stripped of a last name, being humiliated on their way out the door, or high flyers risking showing up the bigger talents? I think the short answer is that he is a complicated and ultimately pretty twisted person. I remember watching “There Will Be Blood” and being disturbed by its eerie parallels w Vince’s life/business, which one of the ex-writers (Greenfield? Bauer?) later noticed as well.
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@Contrasoma there’s also this math that we fail to do when reviewing talents salaries, particularly in sports.
I just listened to sports business folks discuss the Nba salary cap and implications of their revenue loss from Covid. Consider this:
We think Steph Curry makes roughly $40/mil a year on his current contract. What we don’t calculate is that he then pays taxes - So in CA let’s say that’s roughly 13% + Federal income tax of Call it 30ish %. The NBA holds escrow per their CBA and I think if I understand it could never be more than 10% of salary so let’s call it 5%. That means on Curry’s 40M a year deal he actually gets net income of like 22-25M. At some point he gets that escrow amount so it’s slightly higher.
Now nobody is crying for a player like that. But when people hear of talents making 7 figures, figure 30% depending on where they live is gone immediately. Now in Florida where many of these Wrestling talents live they don’t Pay an income tax like CA, but still there’s always a Net number not talked about. Again, nobody crying for them but there’s a a lot more to it.
Nba players then have to pay an agent
And I’m sure a lot of these wealthy players and entertainers support family members.
But guys like curry make up for it with endorsement deals.
It’s the you g nba players who may only get one contract that have to be extra careful. Especially anyone with a deal up this year.
My guess is the precedent it would set. Paige may not move the needle (and she is a unique case given her injury) but what if Finn Balor or say Kevin Owens asked for the same thing?
I do understand why he doesn’t want to hand over main eventers to AEW and you can’t have a policy where you let mid carders go, but not top guys.
Not defending anything, just doing my best to rationalize their thinking.
Agreed, but they have the power to stop this BS is a heartbeat, they choose not to because they don’t want to rock the boat as it appears the majority of performers are happy overall with these giant contracts (relative to what the average fan makes).
I agree with all this though, running a small business I’ve learned how there are so many aspects that the average person is clueless about.
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She had just started an OnlyFans recently and was huge on Twitch. Have to think Aleistair Black isn’t long for WWE either