After debuting for the WWE on the premiere episode of Friday Night SmackDown on FOX back on October 4th, Cain Velasquez is no longer with the company as he has been released according to Dave Meltzer via Wrestling Observer Radio. Velasquez’s name is a part of the handful of releases and furloughs that were made by WWE this month.
Velasquez arrived on SmackDown and was immediately involved in a program with the-then WWE Champion Brock Lesnar. On October 31st, the two competed for the WWE Championship at Crown Jewel in Saudi Arabia where Lesnar tapped out Velasquez in two minutes. Upon his signing, it was noted on WWE’s official website that Cain signed a multi-year deal and Cain confirmed during an interview with the Gorilla Position podcast that his deal was for three years.
Cain also revealed in another interview that he was supposed to be the 2020 men’s Royal Rumble match that was ultimately won by Drew McIntyre.
In the Summer of 2019, Cain Velasquez made his in-ring debut at Triplemanía XXVII in Mexico City and teamed with Psycho Clown and Cody Rhodes to defeat Killer Kross, Texano Jr. and Taurus. Cain’s last match took place in November of 2019 in Mexico City where he and Humberto Carrillo defeated Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson. Yesterday, it was reported by Dave Meltzer that longtime WWE employee Gerald Brisco had either been released or furloughed from the company as well.
God, what a pathetic run. WWE had no idea how to use him. I’m pretty sure he was just signed to get him out of AAA and away from AEW.
Talents need to realize the many downsides of signing with WWE/NXT. You may get more money now but in the long term, unless you have the type of body Vince likes, you won’t make as much.
No shade on Cain, but assuming his contract was as large as I think it was, this is probably the release that makes the most sense out of any of them. Say what you will about the (professional) value some of the lower-tier guys that got cut, but at least they were consistently available to work shows if they were needed. Cain was a vanity contract for a guy that hadn’t been on TV for 4+ months even before the “empty arena era”.
I was thinking the same thing back when all the releases happened. All reports have shown that Cain got a huge contract, and it didn’t look like he was going to be an impact player for a while so to keep that contract on the books when they are cutting talents with no return anytime soon surprised me. This makes sense based on what they have been doing.
He was brought in to give Brock his win back and also deny the other companies a chance to sign him. He wasn’t that hot or over. He can goto AAA now where people might care still
For a publicly traded company their corporate governance is nothing short of disgraceful.
Their operating expenditure was out of control for years, paying outrageous sums of money to “talent” just to keep them from signing with other companies even though nobody gives a f@@k about them as they couldn’t draw a dollar if you gave them paper and a green pen or move the needle.
Now with Covid 19 they are having to confront those incompetent decisions.
They definitely took AEW seriously and acted accordingly. I can’t say WWE overpaying talent bothered me as IMO its always nice seeing these guys get paid well considering what they put their bodies through and if WWE wasnt overpaying, then AEW likely pays less, ROH likely pays less and overall the performers are paid less. I dont want to see that.
Feels like they didn’t want main stream sports media picking up on this release. Seemingly worked for the most part. One could envision ESPN running this story day of