Recently there’s been a lot of talk about WWE cutting pay as a number of wrestlers have been asked to restructure their deals. Some have walked away from the company such as The New Day, but others have accepted the pay cuts.
Bryan Alvarez discussed the pay cuts on Wrestling Observer Live and noted that the talent who are being asked to restructure their deals are the upper midcarders. According to Alvarez the argument is that talent are doing significantly less now than they were when they signed the big money deals because they are not on the road as much, or wrestling as much due to the current WWE schedule.
“From what I understand, these people who have been asked to restructure their deals are people who are upper midcardish, maybe even higher than that. The ones I’ve heard, they’ve been around for a long time and they were making a lot of money. We’re not talking a guy like Roman Reigns or a guy like Seth Rollins. The very tippy-top main eventers, they’re not going to be asking the tippy-top main eventers to restructure their deals. If you are low on the card, you’re probably not making enough that they’re going to bother. The reason that there’s a specific window, it appears, of people that are being asked to restructure is because these people signed pretty big money deals quite a while ago and they’re making that money for quite a while, and now they’re not where they were.
“They’re wanting like 50 percent. They want a 50 percent restructuring of these deals. If it was like 20 percent or whatever, but they want 50. Their justification is things are very different now than when you signed this deal. Yes, we are asking you to take less money but their argument is you are doing significantly less now. You’re not doing four house shows a week. You’re not on the road four days a week paying for your transportation and your hotel and your this and your that. You’re on the road one day a week, you’re wrestling maybe twice a month. This is we want to pay you less because you’re doing less now. That is their mindset. Do not yell at me, I’m just telling you that that’s their perspective there.”
Stay tuned for updates.