Thursday was a busy day, and as the dust settles, we have insight into some WWE releases.
Specifically, the decisions to release Dolph Ziggler and Mustafa Ali.
Fans of WWE surely remember a time, not all that long ago, where Ali was very public about requesting his release from the company.
And as much as he asked for it, he was not granted it at that time.
For whatever reason, WWE held hard and fast about not letting him go.
Eventually fences were mended and he made his return, and yet…nothing great happened.
Ironically, he was granted his release on Thursday, not long before he was slated to take on Dominik Mysterio for the NXT North American Championship.
According to Fightful, Ali’s existing WWE contract was due to expire on it’s own sometime mid-2024.
In other words, presuming he still wanted to see if the grass was greener elsewhere, he didn’t have a tremendously long time to wait.
Insight Into Some WWE Releases
Someone else who had a similar length of time remaining on his WWE deal? Dolph Ziggler.
The former world champion had not wrestled on television since May, and has been very lightly used up until that.
According to the same report, Ziggler was also slated to expire next year.
In addition to that, we found out that at the time of his last contract renewal, he had to be talked into coming back and staying with WWE.
Now, there is no more convincing. Ziggler can wait out his non-compete and either go elsewhere, or just take a break and do something else entirely.
For both Ali and Ziggler, as with other released talents, one common theme was that the talents either had not been used much recently, or there were no concrete plans in the coming months.
Rather than keep them around in the hopes that something would come up, the company has cut them free.
