The news about Dean Ambrose wanting to leave WWE in a few months has caused a ripple effect in the company and they are clearly worried about wrestlers going to All Elite Wrestling.
On PWInsider Elite, Mike Johnson reported that there was a lot of buzz backstage at SmackDown Live as wrestlers were called into rooms because the company wants to extend their deals.
Here is what Johnson said about what went down backstage at SmackDown:
“After the Dean Ambrose news came out on late Monday/early Tuesday, there was a buzz of activity backstage at SmackDown as anybody who had a contract that was coming up in the next year or two was pulled into rooms and spoken to by management about signing longer form deals. All the wrestlers were sitting around looking at each other and going ‘would you look at this? this is crazy!'”
Johnson continued, “there definitely was the realization that people could potentially leave to go to AEW. WWE might have been paying attention before to it and monitoring it as Triple H said but there was definitely a cause and effect between Dean Ambrose making the decision that he is leaving and that news coming out and everyone buzzing about it and then yesterday at SmackDown people being spoken to about deals.”
All of the wrestlers asking for releases in recent weeks is not a coincidence. Mike Kanellis, Maria Kanellis, Hideo Itami, and The Revival have asked for releases. Itami is the only one being granted his release because he is moving back to Japan and Ambrose will be a free agent after the end of April.
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit PWInsider with an h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription
