• Wrestling News & Wrestling Rumors – WWE & TNA

The grim cutbacks in WWE continued throughout yesterday. As well as a hoard of unnamed office staff, WWE have come to terms with the releases of Bam Neely, who had only just been sent back down to development, D’Lo Brown, who barely made it back to TV, Kevin Thorn, who has been floundering in development for ages now, long time wrestler Val Venis, who had initially been sent feelers for a road agent job backstage and is currently out with an injury, and long time referee Jimmy Korderas, who began his WWE career in 1987. I’m told in his case that he had so much tenure, they unfortunately couldn’t afford his paycheck. He joins fellow referees Kevin Keenan and Mike Posey on the unemployment line.

Talented developmental wrestlers Shawn Spears and Mike Kruel were also fired from Florida Championship Wrestling.

On top of these talents, backstage producer Tim White, who is more famous for his refereeing (until he was injured taking a bump) has been released and even Vince McMahon’s personal limo drivers have been given their marching orders.

If it wasn’t sad enough that all of these names were released, WWE had security escort all of the talent and employees that were in WWE buildings at the time, to the outside or to their vehicles; I assume to prevent anything kicking off.

It truly is a black day in WWE and all signs point to it continuing. So far over 85 combined contracted office staff, wrestlers and backstage workers have been released from the company and a lot of the mainstream business and financial media have picked up on the cutbacks. I guess if congress steroid reports aren’t enough, then firing half of the payroll is.

After word spread of the firings WWE stock dropped to $10.51 and closed at that figure yesterday evening. However in the long run this will probably be a positive for the company financially as the main reason for the firings is to tackle the rough economic climate and to counter their poor quarter earnings.

The first wrestler to comment on their release was Kevin Thorn, who posted an in charcter Myspace message claiming “THIS IS NOT GOODBYE, ITS ONLY A NEW BEGINNING!!! LIVE LIKE YOU ARE IMMORTAL!!! PROMISE YOU WILL CARRY ON AND KNOW THAT ,I WILL SEE YOU SOON!!!”

The former ECW star is already taking independent bookings, so I’m guessing he didn’t have a non compete clause in his contract, given that he was in developmental at the time.