Yesterday, the likes of William Regal, Ace Steel, Brian ‘Road Dogg’ James, Timothy Thatcher, Danny Burch and more NXT personnel were released from WWE.
Gabe Sapolsky took to social media today and noted the following, “Looks like the end of the road. Thank you everyone. Love you all!”. Both PWInsider and Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp have independently confirmed that Sapolsky is gone from WWE.
Throughout his tenure in pro wrestling, Sapolsky booked for Ring of Honor, was the Vice President of Dragon Gate USA and during the early stages of his career, he worked closely with Paul Heyman.
I won’t take anything away from Gabe’s past successes. However, I think indie wresting has, pardon the pun, evolved past him.
Nobody was following Evolve for its last several years, and people really only looked at it as an easy way on to NXT’s radar.
I think he could probably have a role in a company like Impact for creative… But I don’t see him starting something new, or fitting in with most of the major indies.
That said… It would be tremendously interesting to see if ROH brought him on board for their relaunch.
He was let go in 2008 (literally days before their Canadian debut shows). From what I recall it was an issue of ROH / Cary Silkin wanting to go in one direction (TV being a major goal), whole Gabe had other ideas.
He was replaced by Adam Pearce I believe at the time. And the product went in a pretty different direction.
Gabe would eventually start Dragon Gate USA and Evolve, after a hiatus from wrestling.
That’s all correct. Silkin let him go in late October 2008 with the desire to change directions, and he installed Adam Pearce as the new booker. New names and directions were brought in, count-outs were instituted in the company, and by September 2009 (Bryan Danielson’s farewell, and Nigel McGuinness’ in-ring farewell), Jim Cornette came aboard.
As Silkin has mentioned in a recent interview, ROH was never profitable while he owned it. ROH’s TV deal with HDNet (now AXS TV) started in early 2009.
Gabe joined up with the Dragon Gate promotion and his long-time partner Sal Hamaoui (who used to produce ROH’s DVDs from 2004 to 2009, and still runs WWN) to start Dragon Gate USA in July 2009, and then EVOLVE followed in January 2010.
I was thinking about this yesterday, but I seriously doubt AEW would be a destination for him. He may still have heat with too many people there (the Young Bucks and Darby Allin in particular, and I can’t think of the full stories).
