Dave Meltzer is reporting that there were apparently some top people in WWE that were upset over the comments from Mick Foley on his social media accounts shortly after the Royal Rumble. The comments were about Daniel Bryan’s push and criticism over how the creative was handling him. WWE, after having Foley’s WWE ambassador deal expired they offered him a Legends deal (the ambassador deal was then given to the Ultimate Warrior). Foley recently noted that he turned it down because he was not happy with the pay from the last WWE video game.
Here’s Foley’s statement on turning down the Legends deal:
As some of you may have heard, at this point, I am opting not to sign by Legends marketing deal, which gives WWE the right to market my likeness on video games and action figures. I’ll be writing about this is more detail in the next week or so, but it would be fair to say that, despite strong sales, I have found the payoffs for the past two video games to be extremely weak, in the 25 percent range of what most talent was expecting. Last year, the explanation had something to do with the video game company going bankrupt–a real shame for me, since I was heavily featured as three characters from the Attitude era, complete with voice work. I haven’t heard this year’s explanation yet, but personally, I think the WWE just wants to see if talent will accept a far lower percentage than had previously been given. If so, it would probably be a good business move for WWE since very few current wrestlers are going to jeopardize their standing with the company by offering resistance, and most legends will probably come to feel like anything they get from merchandising is better than nothing.