As we exclusively reported here on the website earlier today, the Monday afternoon WWE talent meeting was a direct response to JTG ranting on Twitter about how he and other WWE talents are disrespected. A mass text message and email was sent to all talents on Sunday telling them to be at RAW by 3PM for a meeting. Talents are expected to arrive at the arena by 2PM anyways. While almost nobody spoke up when Triple H asked them to do so for obvious reasons, one talent stated the following… “They yell at us in a backstage meeting, fire Abraham Washington and job out JTG in the same week …. and then want all of us to speak out on our frustrations? Are you f*cking kidding me?!” That goes with what we’ve been exclusively reporting – nobody wants to speak up due to fear of being released. It’s a lose-lose situation for these guys.
As we exclusively noted, WWE talent was told that they needed to handle themselves professionally via social media and were also told that the media as well as the public will monitor what they say. As noted, the company is very worried with Linda McMahon’s senate campaign. Instead of talent speaking up knowing they’ll get backstage heat and could be fired, they are choosing to “play it smart” and go to the media themselves to get the information out. It’s basically WWE playing “hardball” vs. the mid-card talents playing “hardball”. They tell talents to speak up and address their issues and then fire them the following week. This is the reason people simply don’t speak out despite over half the current roster being extremely frustrated.
Many wrestlers noted privately that it was interesting that JTG was used on RAW for the first time in quite awhile after his rant. Despite being “jobbed out” to Ryback as an obvious “punishment”, they are trying to keep him semi-happy for fear that he’ll continue venting to the mainstream media and on social media. It’s basically a case of “we’ll now give you TV time but job you out for speaking up”. In addition to that, there was talk of adding him to the Prime Time Players but nothing is confirmed at this point.
As previously reported, many talents were upset that recent payouts for international tours and WrestleMania were down and at all-time lows. In the case of WrestleMania, a number of mid-card talents were upset that the payouts were only $2,000, but those were talents that did not actually work the PPV. While not working the PPV, talent tend to all receive a piece of the WrestleMania take. Also, while not working the PPV, most of the talents were used during the week at AXXESS and other such events. They did a ton of media for the company, which in turn allows them to get a “bonus”. These payouts are at all-time lows. As we exclusively noted, the company blamed the $500 Brazilian checks on a “clerical error” which had many talents rolling their eyes. If we never leaked those figures out, you can bet WWE wouldn’t have done anything about it.
We’ll have more on this in the coming weeks. Things are going to get very, VERY interesting. Trust us as we’ve got a lot more exclusive news we’ll be breaking this week.
