Welcome to part 1 of a four part series of Spring Cleaning for the 2017 WWE Roster!
Essentially, what this is going to breakdown to is an evaluation of the men and women that WWE either will or perhaps should be releasing to free up some space on the roster, for whatever reason. This could be anything from a prolonged stay in the company with little to no improvement, pure lack of talent to begin with, no longer having anything left to contribute, or any other qualifiers that may put someone in danger.
For part 1, we’re going to be focusing on the Raw roster (save for those in the cruiserweight division).
DISCLAIMER: Some people are getting the wrong impression about this series. None of this is based on any insider information that these releases will happen. This is entirely a thought exercise and a debate asking you who you would pick to release if you were in a situation where you had to do a “spring cleaning” adjustment for budgetary concerns. Try to keep in mind that this is not a petition to get people fired or anything malicious, but just a discussion on who in your mind might be the easiest to cut if necessary.
Paige
This list isn’t in any specific order, but if it would be, Paige would be #1 on the Raw roster for my choices of people to just get rid of. I have to imagine she makes the most amount of money out of everybody mentioned here and she certainly has been causing WWE the most amount of headaches as of late with her leaked nudes scandal, her suspensions, being guilty-by-association with Alberto Del Rio and treating it as something she not only doesn’t condone, but supports, and just her attitude and behavioral issues in general.
Paige also has the distinction of being injured at the moment, supposedly, so she checks off every single qualifier of being someone who is more of a hindrance than a benefit. If she were out of shape, no longer attractive, helped run an anti-Linda McMahon campaign and punched a baby she’d be batting a thousand.
I’m of the camp that Paige was never as good as the hype that she and others have bought into. By no means was she bad, but WWE had someone better in AJ Lee and passed the torch to Paige, who was far surpassed by the current crop of women we have now, in my opinion. I’d much rather watch a Bayley, Alexa Bliss, Sasha Banks or even Charlotte Flair (despite my complaining about her from time to time) match than to see anything with Paige ever again, and with all of the other problems she stirs up, WWE should give her what she wants with her release. Good riddance. Have fun winning the title your first night in TNA.
Bo Dallas
Let’s just get the joke out of the way right off the bat: does anybody really Bolieve anymore?
My philosophy with every talent is if I have never seen them before, I go into checking them out with an open mind. The first few times they perform, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that they may get better. Eventually, they either have improved and I genuinely like them, they’ve made no improvements and I lose faith, or in rare instances, people can even regress further and be worse than they originally came off.
Bo Dallas has never impressed me in any sense of the word and it’s been nearly ten years of him being in WWE in some fashion (having started at FCW in 2008). At the very least, it’s been five years of him from NXT and the main roster and during that time, we’ve seen him go from “awkward looking guy” to “awkward looking guy who doesn’t know he’s a loser” to “awkward looking guy who knows he’s a loser but has a few loser friends” all the way back to “wait a minute, he’s still employed?”
His mic skills are exactly the same as before, his ring skills haven’t stepped up, and absolutely nothing has been done to give him a repackaging or a different character to try something else, which means either he has no creativity and WWE can’t think of anything that could work either, or WWE actively is holding this guy down to a massive level where he’ll never be able to break out anyway.
For years, people have wanted him to join The Wyatt Family purely out of his familial connection, and while I can’t picture that turning out well, it’s worth a shot. Then again, he’s caused issues with a DUI and a public intoxication incident while doing seemingly nothing to truly benefit WWE in return. I can’t help but feel Dallas isn’t being given a pink slip because of his brother and his father working with the company, yet that money for his contract could be better served going to someone who earns it.
Curt Hawkins
What has he accomplished since rejoining WWE? He showed up around the same time as Jinder Mahal, who is now fighting for the WWE Championship, while Hawkins is doing a gimmick where everybody can beat him every week—which is oddly a step up from what he was doing before, because at least he can show up on television on a regular basis now.
You need to keep enhancement talent and Hawkins can fulfill that role, but with anybody on the jobber spectrum, losing them from the payroll isn’t going to ruffle any feathers. They can easily be replaced with local wrestlers and in the grand scheme of things, nobody would care or notice anything. Apollo Crews getting a victory over Curt Hawkins means about the same as beating Tripp Bradshaw.
There may be hope for Hawkins if he can find himself a tag team partner (my pick would be Heath Slater if Rhyno ends up leaving at any point) but as a solo performer, the future isn’t looking bright for him.
Darren Young
Has Darren Young ever been liked by the WWE Universe? He wasn’t anywhere close to the top of the food chain with his season of NXT, he somehow became the least likable member of The Prime Time Players despite the other one being Titus O’Neil (and an argument can be made that he should be on this list, too, for that matter), and he’s mostly been another one of those Main Event / Superstars caliber performers.
Mr. No Days Off has spent time away before and nobody’s been clamoring to see his return. When he does show up, it’s less than a big deal and he goes straight to losing. Even the parody campaign of Make Darren Young Great Again was immediately scoffed at with the joke “when has he ever been even good, let alone great?”
Some try to argue that WWE should keep him around because of his sexual preference, suggesting it would be a bad P.R. move to release him. True, it would be absolutely horrendous if WWE ever fired somebody for that reason, but isn’t it patronizing to keep him for that very same reason? If you remove that element from the equation and you evaluate his talent with the same scope as everybody else and he’s just as bad (if not worse) than a Bo Dallas, you have every reason to get rid of him if you find yourself needing to trim the fat.
Curtis Axel
I hate saying this, as I feel like Curtis Axel has more to offer than WWE lets him, but if you’re looking for people to target, his name has to at least be in the discussion for Raw.
In my mind, Axel’s true calling is going to be working with the Performance Center as a trainer and in a similar functionality, I’d like to see him “demoted” to NXT where he can be a bigger star in a smaller pond, working to train younger talent and to acclimate outsiders to the WWE style.
His role on the main roster has mostly been Main Event and Superstars jobber and it’s a guarantee that wasn’t his career aspirations. He, like everybody else, had goals to become the top of the business, but he’s quite literally at the bottom of the barrel as far as main roster wrestlers go.
Axel lacks the charisma necessary to justify pushing him even as a genuine midcarder like during his Intercontinental Championship run, where he had a manager that offset that attribute. Now, years have passed and his stock has gone down, so it’s not as simple as just pairing him up with another talker and giving him the belt once more.
Summer Rae
What is going on with Summer Rae?
To be fair, that’s a question that could have been asked at almost any time in her main roster career and for the most part, people wouldn’t have an answer. She had her Mean Girls inspired stable in NXT, she had her stint as Fandango’s dance partner, she had some romantic entanglements with Dolph Ziggler and Rusev, then Tyler Breeze…and, well…that’s about it.
At this point, I can’t honestly remember the last time she was on television. She’s been injured for what feels like two years now and if it’s that bad of a situation, shouldn’t her career basically be over? I don’t think someone who could easily just stick with her modeling would want to beat her body up to accomplish nothing, as WWE has never given her a solid push and it’s doubtful anything would change when she would return this time.
If Summer Rae were being utilized as a manager or other on-screen role, I wouldn’t be saying that she should be released, but in an era that focuses more on the in-ring talent for women in wrestling and less on the supermodel athlete angle, there isn’t much room for someone who is no longer a fresh commodity and has significant injuries working against her.
Those are my picks for the Raw roster, but who do you think should be on the chopping block to be future endeavored? Tell us your ideas in the comments below!
