Update On Change To How WWE Negotiates Contract Renewals

WWE

A new report has provided an update on a change to how WWE negotiates renewal of expiring contracts.

In 2021, WWE saw major deals expire in Adam Cole and Bryan Danielson with both stars making the jump to All Elite Wrestling. That same year, the company saw a few contracts expire without the company realizing, such as Cole and Pete Dunne.

Despite this, a large percentage of the roster is signed through 2024 after huge contracts were offered in 2019.

2022 was a year of massive change for WWE with a regime change following Vince McMahon’s brief retirement and Triple H taking over creative. However, an implemented negotiation method has seemingly stuck around with the new regime.

Fightful Select (subscription required) has provided an update, noting that a change in talent relations and a major turnover internally led to change in the way contracts were negotiated in the last year or so of Vince McMahon’s regime before he left.

In the past, WWE would start to reach out to talent to extend their deals a year and a half before they expired.

However, the newer approach was to come closer to their expiration date before negotiations even begin in many cases now.

This is apparently a practice that started to be used in the summer of 2021. That hasn’t exclusively been the case, but it was a big adjustment from the company looking to lock down talent way ahead of their deals expiring.

Under Triple H, it remains to be seen how things will change, but it looks to so far be the same method as of now.

Here’s a recap of what happened on the May 8 episode of WWE Raw:

Seth ‘Freakin’ Rollins def. Damian Priest, Shinsuke Nakamura in the WWE World Heavyweight Championship tournament

Mustafa Ali def. Otis when Chad Gable and Maxxine Dupri argued and distracted Otis

Finn Balor def. Cody Rhodes, The Miz in the WWE World Heavyweight Championship tournament

Brock Lesnar, who had cost Cody Rhodes the aforementioned three-way, attacked Rhodes and demanded a rematch from Backlash at Night of Champions, which Rhodes later accepted

Rhea Ripley def. Dana Brooke and was then confronted by Natalya

Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn def. Giovanni Vinci & Ludwig Kaiser

Johnny Gargano, Candice LeRae, Indi Hartwell and Dexter Lumis reunited The Way backstage, and Gargano hinted at someone else returning soon which could be Tommaso Ciampa

Zoey Stark def. Nikki Cross

Becky Lynch returned and confronted Trish Stratus

Dominik Mysterio def. Xavier Woods

Seth Rollins def. Finn Balor in the WWE World Heavyweight Championship tournament

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