Why So Many WWE Stars Have Been Released, Company Reportedly ‘Held Back’ Last Year & ‘Catching Up’ This Year

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WWE was reportedly playing “catch-up” on releases after “holding back” last year, which is why there have been so many cuts this time around.

As of this writing, there are 30 known WWE departures that have taken place since WrestleMania 42 – the full list of which you can find by clicking here – including 18 from the main roster.

That’s in contrast to this time last year, when there were only six main roster names cut in the annual post-Mania releases, meaning this year has had triple that amount, with some big names like New Day, the Wyatt Sicks, Kairi Sane and Aleister Black chief among them.

There are reportedly a couple reasons reasons there are so many more this time around, which in short, are:

WWE was “holding back” last year and playing “catch-up” this year

So many recent main roster call-ups from NXT

SmackDown moving from three hours to two hours soon

The Full Explanation For WWE Releases

On today’s Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer explained:

“The story on the cuts being so many – there’s a couple of reasons behind it.

“What happened is essentially, last year, because they had basically just taken over the company and they were trying to be ‘good guys,’ so they didn’t order a lot of cuts last year, they kinda held back. So it’s kinda like a catch-up.

“Developmental, they’re adding new people to developmental, the people who they’d figured aren’t gonna make it, those were the ones cut.

“The main roster cuts, essentially it was two things. Number one, all the people who were brought up from NXT that got spots, essentially they wanted to remove a similar amount of people.

“They went to creative. It was creative that made the call as to who. They said ‘Who are you not planning on using? Give us X number of names.’

“The number that were brought up, and additional names from SmackDown, the reason being that SmackDown at the end of this month, SmackDown is going to two hours, so therefore there is an hour less time of television, so therefore there is less time to put as many people on, so therefore there would be additional cuts on the SmackDown side.

“So that’s the story behind the number of cuts.”

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