During an appearance on The Rich Eisen Show, John Cena gave his thoughts on wrestlers being released by WWE in recent months:
“I think a lot of the frustration from the audience out there, they view sports entertainment like I do. I love watching matches, I love seeing potential in human beings. I love seeing potential in performers and I see potential in everybody especially when people begin to define what they would call a gimmick or a personality. I love to be able to try to run with them on conversations to see how far we can take it. But there is only so many spots, there is only so much programming. I understand from a business standpoint the amount of releases that have had to happen. If the company justifies that hey this is the move we’re making, we wanna carry less talent, it has very little to do with profit loss margin. If the company strategy is to run on a lean roster, it doesn’t matter, you run on a lean roster. If the company strategy is to run on a fat roster, I remember when we had stacks of performers and the stock price was 7 bucks. It’s just the directive that the company was given to run on a talent heavy roster or a talent lean roster.”
“Obviously, it’s a touchy subject and it’s gonna elicit perspective from everyone and everyone certainly is entitled to their perspective. I think the sad thing is people who have this gift aren’t being allowed to use it and people are out of a job. That is the absolute saddest thing that people can no longer work at a company that they called home for a period of time. I feel for everybody who’s had to go in that direction. All of us, myself included, our journey will eventually have an end. When you’re in it, sometimes you don’t have that perspective.”
“I was brought up in bi-annual cuts and it happened all the time and I just think WWE went through such a long period of not releasing anybody and now they’re kind of getting back to the rhythm again that it is a very abrupt shift to somebody who is not familiar with that. My heart goes out to everybody who has to get that sad news because that’s a tough conversation to have.”
