More Details On New Day’s WWE Exit, Talent Being Asked To Take Pay Cuts

A new report has a lot of new details on the New Day’s exits from WWE and talent being asked by the company to take pay cuts. As has been extensively reported over the past few days, Xavier Woods and Kofi Kingston exited WWE after being asked to restructure their contracts and take a lower amount of money. In addition, a number of other talent are reported to have been asked to take cuts.

Fightful Select has published a report on the matter. The outlet says that according to sources, WWE was charged with lowering their payroll by “millions” over the past month, which led to the cuts being made. It was a matter of criticism in the industry, particularly in relation to how the pay for TKO executives were reported in company filings at around the same time.

Most people in the industry acknowledged that releases will be a reality for WWE, but criticized the notion of asking talent to take seven-figure pay cuts in several instances. Some people within the talent and agency side of the industry said that the round of cuts and ask for pay cuts are likely to change how talent negotiates contracts with TKO and WWE from here on out. Several said that there isn’t any real confidence that the big money deals that many wrestlers sign will make it through their entire terms.

Per the report, Sean Ross Sapp learned that several talent in recent years were contacted during overseas tours about new deals, and that in some cases it was much earlier than they anticipated being talked to about such. Some believed this was an attempt to get talent to sign the new deals before their representatives could go over the deal, though it’s important to note that this is speculation on the talents’ part and not anything concrete.

Regarding the pay cuts, WWE approached a number of talent and asked them to take cuts in order to stay with the company. The report says that several talent were given just two days to make the decision. As you may recall, Killer Kross noted that he was also only given a day to decide whether to accept his new contract offer last year.

Woods and Kingston are said to have made the decision “pretty quickly” that they would instead leave. In leaving, the two left millions behind on the remaining four years of their contract. The outlet says they haven’t heard anything in regard to the rumor that Woods could potentially return on a “digital only” deal. Such a deal would still prevent Woods from working for AEW and cost him millions of dollars in the long run.

The report notes that despite another outlet citing a WWE source as being “disgusted” that WWE didn’t publicly acknowledge the New Day’s contributions to the company when they exited, a source told them that the company did communicate such privately. A joint statement was expected to be sent out announcing the exit but obviously wasn’t. There’s no word on why it didn’t get released.

To no surprise, several people in AEW have pushed for the company to bring in the New Day duo. Fightful Select notes that talent have been frustrated in how WWE has cut talent like New Day, Santos Escobar and more who have signed WWE deals in the past year and didn’t attempt to engage with other companies. WWE letting the talent go and reducing pay effectively lowers leverage talent have to negotiate with AEW or other companies. Several representatives of talent noted that it was not even a wise move from a perspective of being competitive, because one would think WWE would want AEW to have to spend more on talent.

There has been no word on specific names who accepted pay cuts. The percentage of the cuts were “shifted across” what has been reported, which has been as high as 50% in one report’s case. A number of longtime veterans were asked to take the cuts, including some who are recovering from injury.

Finally, for anyone curious on why it was easier to find out that the New Day were asked to take pay cuts compared to who did take pay cuts, it was a matter of WWE moving them to the alumni section of the roster page. That made it easier to learn the details.