During a recent appearance on the “Power Alphas” podcast, Dean Muhtadi (Mojo Rawley in WWE) revealed that he made $39,000 per year when he signed his first contract with WWE. He said,
“Coming in was kind of crazy. I had an injury in football with the Cardinals. My calf tore off and rolled up the back of my knee, it was four in a half inches. You could put your fist into the spot where my calf used to be, it was horrific. I was out for 18 months. I thought I was done. I had moved on in my mind. I signed a contract to work at Meril Lynch. I was fortunate enough to walk again, let alone return to the field of play. Rehab, I went to the Univerity of Maryland to try and come back. I was looking at trying to go back to football, and I knew then, I was talking to the Raiders and Jets, I thought I was getting a shot with one of those two teams. Even if I had, I could have been cut the next week. I was well aware of that. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but I had this opportunity to check out what was going on with WWE because the Gronkowski brothers were some of my best friends and their dad was college roommates with Mike Rotunda. They made a phone call, we talked to Mike, he set up an interview tryout thing. That was it. I got the offer and I left football to come to wrestling. I spent my entire career to make it to football, I got to that level, I would’ve been compensated as such. I would have been making somewhere in the neighborhood of [$400,000 to $500,000] a year with football, if I made the team, which those are big ifs. I had the opportunity to come to WWE, making $39,000 a year, started from scratch in an industry that I had only watched on TV and had done nothing in. Sat down, really evaluated things and long-term aspirations and I was like, ‘I want to do this. I think this is going to be cool and something I can be good at.’“
During a recent appearance at Monopoly Events’ “For The Love of Wrestling” convention, Shelton Benjamin praised WWE NXT Superstar Charlie Dempsey, who is the son of William Regal. He said,
“Not only have I met him, I actually wrestled him a couple months ago [on Main Event]. He’s great. I worked with Charlie Dempsey, some of the other newer guys like Damon Kemp. Dempsey, he’s great. He’s gonna be so good.“
