Ask 411 Wrestling: Was WWE Right Let The New Day Go?

Welcome guys, gals, and gender non-binary pals . . . through Hel Stryer and brimstone, it’s Ask 411 Wrestling!

I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and I am here to answer some of your burning inquiries about professional wrestling. If you have one of those queries searing a hole in your brain, feel free to send it along to me at [email protected]. Don’t be shy about shooting those over – the more, the merrier.

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Mike Too Hotty!! needs to get a haircut and get a new job:

I want your opinion on the WWE releases lately. Everyone is blaming WWE and the fact they don’t know what they are doing. At what point do you have to blame the fans? Example – Motor City Machine Guns, Alister Black, Santos Escobar, and most specifically Ilja Dragunov. They tried to push these guys, and the fans just didn’t respond to them. Dragunov was given the title and put on AMAZING matches for a few months but still got zero reaction from the crowd. WWE can’t try forever to get these guys over…if you see fans aren’t reacting you need to just cut the cord. Andrade is another case, put on amazing matches, zero reaction. Goes to AEW and fans are into him, he gets a nice push. And with New Day, they did all they could in WWE, it was time to let them go. Look at their last Wrestlemania match with War Raiders…no crowd reaction at all, why keep them around?

I’m sure if any of these guys were getting fan responses they would still be there (look at Trick Williams, fans responded and he gets the major push). Makes me scared for guys like Carmello Hayes, someone else that puts on AMAZING matches and fans are just slightly into him. Little to no reaction when he comes out. Can you blame WWE for letting some of these guys go?

First off, reporting on the Dragunov situation indicates that he chose not to re-sign rather than WWE opting not to re-sign him, so he’s in a different situation than the wrestlers who were actually cut.

The New Day are also in a different category than folks like the MCMG, Black, and Escobar. I have zero criticism for WWE when it comes to their decision to cut ties with Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods after 20 and 16 years, respectively. (And technically they chose to leave after being faced with a pay cut, but if you tell somebody you want to reduce their pay by that amount of money, you know what you’re doing.) Most wrestlers just can’t remain in the same place for that long a period of time and remain interesting. Towards the end, New Day in WWE started to remind me of Dolph Ziggler at the end of his time in the company. They were all talented performers so you couldn’t be critical of them for doing anything bad, but they just weren’t interesting anymore.

If I were a decision-maker in WWE, I likely would have wrapped things up with Kingston and Woods as well, though I likely would have had the spine just cut them outright rather than playing this halfhearted game where I offered them a restructured contract that effectively forced them to make the decision to walk out the door.

When it comes to Black, Andrade, and Escobar, I’m not entirely sure why WWE re-signed them in the first place after their original contracts with the company ended. It’s not like any of them were particularly over in their first runs with the promotion, and I haven’t the foggiest idea of why company brass thought that there would be any different result the second time around. Given that I don’t understand the rationale for bringing them back in the first place, I can’t say that I have any issue with the call to let them go.

The only people mentioned in the question who I feel a bit bad for are the Machine Guns. I admit that there may be some personal bias there, because I’ve been a big fan of their work since the early 2000s, and I was very excited for them to finally get their opportunity on wrestling’s biggest stage. They started off hot enough with their tag team title victory over the Bloodline, but then they were almost immediately cycled down the card before getting relegated to Main Event. Their failure to me feels more like a function of how they were booked, as they were never given anything interesting to do in following up on their debut and had no time to establish what their characters were. That’s more on WWE than it is on them.

As with just about any group of mass releases, these were a mixed bag.

Paris has had his last night in town:

With the passing of the Butcher (RIP) it got me thinking: To me he had almost a “perfect look” and maybe old school rasslin’ name. Do you have a top five “this guy was born to be a wrestler” looks (like how if you saw Brock Lesnar behind the counter at McDonald’s you’d say “bro, how are you NOT playing football?!”). Also, do you have any idea who I would contact to get a petition started to make the “Butcher Battle Royal” a permanent yearly thing in his honor?

Sure, I can knock out a quick top five. Here goes:

Dick the Bruiser: I’m referring in particular to young Bruiser before he got older and doughier. If you look at him in his physical prime, he had massive traps and pecs, missing teeth, a Johnny Unitas-style crew cut you could set your watch by, and a mug that only a mother could love. For an entire generation, this was the archetype of “professional wrestler,” and it’s the kind of look that Butcher was a throwback to, albeit with a few modern twists like his tattoos.

Jun Kasai: He’s not the biggest dog in the fight, but if you take a look at the Japanese deathmatch wrestler known as the “Crazy Monkey,” you’d conclude he probably wouldn’t be landing a job interview at your local Edward Jones office. He’s missing his front teeth, his face is almost always twisted up into some insane grimace, and, perhaps most importantly, 75% of his body is scar tissue. By the end of his career, he may just be one big scar.

Vader: As we all know, throughout the 1980s, top pro wrestlers started to look more and more like bodybuilders, thanks in large part to the superstardom that Hulk Hogan achieved. This meant that, when Vader broke big in the early 1990s, he felt like a bit of a throwback . . . but it was a throwback that absolutely worked. He didn’t have the definition of a Hogan, Sting, or Ultimate Warrior, but you could tell he was muscular, you could tell he was powerful, and if you saw him in an airport, you’d still say, “Yep, that guy kicks people’s asses for a living.”

Ox Baker: Baker got over in large part due to a myth that he killed another wrestler in the ring. While that story wasn’t true, he sure looked like it could be. He had that prototypical old school wrestler body, but he made himself look all the more menacing by styling his facial hair and eyebrows in such a way that he resembled classic depictions of Satan. This made his appearance as a contestant on the Price is Right in 1981 very, very surreal.

Andre the Giant: I feel like I shouldn’t even need to explain this one.

When it comes to making the Butcher Battle Royale an annual event, AEW maintains a general contact email address of [email protected]. Reach out to them there.

HBK’s Smile is going south of the equator:

With Stephanie Vaquer winning the Women’s World Title in Santiago, Chile, is this the first time a World Champion in a predominantly American promotion is crowned in South America legitimately (no phantoms)? If so, has any title from such a promotion changed hands there? Or any recognized World Titles from promotions based outside the Untied States?

I think that the answer to your question is yes. I could not find any record of a recognized world championship from a promotion based out of the U.S., Japan, or even Mexico changing hands in South America. Even if we broaden things to ANY championship, I could only find one instance of somewhat significant title from the U.S., Japan, or Mexico changing hands on that continent – and even then, it’s a bit of stretch to call this championship “significant.”

If you look at the history for the NWA World Tag Team Championship – the version established directly by the NWA in the 1990s – you will see that, on June 8, 2002 in Lima, Peru, the Shane Twins defeated the Heavenly Bodies of Chris Nelson and Vito DeNucci for those titles. When I first read that, I raised my eyebrow because it sounded like this might be a phantom title change – which HBK’s Smile told us to avoid – so I tried to verify that this actually took place. I could not find any information regrading the show in question, such as the promotion that put it on or a full set of results.

However, the Shane Twins did a podcast with Insiders Edge five years ago, and in it they confirmed they were, in fact, in Peru for the title change. Also, the June 17, 2002 issue of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter mentions the title change and explicitly states that it was on a real show even though it sounded like “one of those Rio de Janeiro deals,” referencing the fictitious match in which Pat Patterson became the first WWF Tag Team Champion.

Additionally, it’s worth noting that the Shanes winning the NWA Tag Titles was the last time those belts changed hands before TNA took control of them for five years between 2002 and 2007. Rather than having the twins come into the new NWA-TNA as champions, they were stripped of the tiles. The Shanes were brought in to TNA, but they were put under flesh-colored masks and bodysuits and rechristened Richard and Rod Johnson in one of wrestling’s most infamous gimmicks. Between that and having their championships unceremoniously taken away, you could say that TNA screwed over the Shanes twice before they even set foot into the ring.

ALSO – This is totally unrelated to the main thrust of this answer, but it was a bit of information that I learned while looking into this Lima title change and found interesting. Apparently, by the time the Shane Twins won the titles there, Florida indy guys had already been touring in Peru for several years based on the popularity of Attitude Era WWF shows airing there on television. As far back as 1999, Steve “Skinner” Keirn had been organizing well-attended tours of Peru. In May of ’99 a Florida crew went down that included the Shanes, 90s indy stalwart Billy Fives, and Rusty Brooks, former WWF enhancement guy who once wrestled Hulk Hogan on Saturday Night’s Main Event. Another tour was arranged in July of the same year, which included Fives and Brooks again, along with Angel Orsini and the woman who would eventually go onto be Lita.

Unfortunately, that July 1999 tour was cut short when one of the wrestlers on it, a young man named Yuel Lovett, died of a heart attack after one of the shows. He was 28 years old. The wrestler Lex Lovett, who became a Florid indy staple himself and did enhancement work for TNA in the early days of Impact, took his ring name as a tribute to Yuel, as the two had previously been roommates.

Jase is pumping up the jams:

What wrestler(s) had the biggest upgrade and downgrade in entrance music, past or present?

The biggest downgrade has to be Chris Jericho in 2002, when WWE tried to move him away from his classic walkout music to a track called “King of My World” by Saliva. While his original song got you on your feet and pumped for his athletic in-ring style, the Saliva song was slow and plodding, not matching Jericho at all in addition to generally not being a fun listen.

If you want to talk about significant upgrades, you have to talk about Mark Henry. In 2005, the World’s Strongest Man was coming out to some pretty forgettable generic rock music. Then, in 2006, he adopts “Somebody’s Gonna Get It,” the track by the Three 6 Mafia that became his defining theme. It was a song that made it abundantly clear that the man entering to it was one not to be trifled with, because he was not just gonna kick your ass but also split your wig. Have you ever tried to reassemble a split wig? It is nigh impossible.

Uzoma wrote this question while chugging a Real American Beer:

What are your thoughts on Hulk Hogan getting booed in his final WWE appearance?

It was almost certainly a reaction to his having appeared at the Republican National Convention several months earlier. It’s fine to have your political beliefs and share them, but you have to understand that in the highly polarized environment that we live in today, there’s a good chance that half the population of the United States is going to hate your guts for doing it. The Hulkster learned that lesson the hard way.

Some people may think that this is a black mark on his career since it was his last time on WWE television before his passing, but I can’t say it bothered me. He was a grown man who made his bed, and he needed to lie in it.

Tyler from Winnipeg is skipping this question to go to the merch stand:

If you had to guess: How many Austin 3:16 shirts were sold?

I covered this back in 2025.

Rahil is going Broadway:

What’s the longest match post-1980?

As with many questions of this nature, it depends in large part on what you want to count.

The longest match of any type that is ever recorded to have occurred took place on June 22, 2026 in Gaitneau, Quebec, Canada on a show co-promoted by indy groups Mystery Wrestling and C4 Wrestling. The match in question was a so-called “Infinite Rumble,” a Royal Rumble style bout that featured numerous entrants and ran for 21 hours, 58 minutes, and 49 seconds. The same two promotions ran the same match on August 11, 2025, and it held the record at 21 hours, 49 minutes, 12 seconds until the 2026 installment surpassed it. Both of these matches, by the way, were held on benefit shows that raised tens of thousands of dollars for the Canadian Cancer Society.

I can understand if you would prefer not to count this as the true record holder, though, because it’s easier to have an incredibly long match when you’re doing something like a Rumble that constantly cycles people in and out of the ring. What about a one-on-one encounter?

Those honors go to Antonio Inoki and Masa Saito, who on October 4, 1987 locked up in New Japan Pro Wrestling’s Ganryu-jima Deathmatch. This bout saw Inoki and Saito, two bitter rivals, lock it up in a match without an audience held outdoors on Ganryu-jima, a small island accessible only via boat. The island was famous in Japan as the site of a legendary duel between two samurai in the Seventeenth Century.

Inoki and Saito’s duel lasted 2 hours, 5 minutes, and 42 seconds, living up to the legend established by the samurai.

Big Al breathes fire:

I still remember when Chris Jericho took on the Hall of Famers Roddy Piper, Jimmy Snuka, and Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat at Wrestlemania XXV and out of NOWHERE Steamboat climbed to top rope and was flying across the ring like he was young again. I fanned out big time. My question is, did anybody actually know Steamboat could still do all this at age 56? I know it lead a one one one match at Backlash but I still can’t believe he was as good as he was.

Before the Legends Match at Mania XXV occurred, Steamboat had been working as a WWE agent for slightly over a year. He wasn’t wrestling any matches in that role – at least not in front of audiences – but he would have been at plenty of shows at which rings were set up, and I can’t imagine that he didn’t get in there and run some spots to make sure that he could still go before ultimately committing to have a bout at Wrestlemania. I think that people backstage were well aware of the shape that he was in.

That does it for this week. We’ll return in seven-ish days, and, as always, you can contribute your questions by emailing [email protected]. You can also leave questions in the comments below, but please note that I do not monitor the comments as closely as I do the email account, so emailing is the better way to get things answered.