Former WWE NXT star Andre Chase says he was never given a reason for the company’s decision to break up Chase U, and that his attempts to argue against it fell on deaf ears.
Chase, who was released by WWE in April, reflected on the end of his beloved NXT faction during an appearance on the Between Two Jobs podcast. He explained that when creative informed him of the plan, no explanation came with it.
“When they tell me what they’re doing, they don’t really tell me why they’re doing it. Which obviously they don’t have to,” Chase said. Believing the conversation was still open, he made his case from a business standpoint.
Central to that case were Chase U’s merchandise numbers, which Chase said rivaled those of NXT’s top champions. He recalled a merch representative named Teddy pulling him aside at Halloween Havoc with a telling stat. According to Chase, he was told he “sold just as much merchandise as Trick and Roxanne, the champions,” that the same had been true at No Mercy, and that he had the highest-selling shirt at Heatwave.
Chase argued that those numbers, along with the group’s strong ratings, made the decision difficult to justify.
“With very little advertising and very little help from them, why does it make sense that we’re selling as much merch as Trick Williams and Roxanne Perez when they’re in every main event, every piece of advertising?” he said. “It shouldn’t compute, and somehow we have done it.”
According to Chase, creative had no real answer. “From a business perspective, can you please tell me why this is a good idea? And they can’t. They just say, ‘This is the direction we’re going,'” he recalled. That was the moment it became clear to him that the decision was final. “That’s when I realized it wasn’t a conversation. They had already made up their minds.”
For Chase, the takeaway was that the metrics he believed mattered simply did not factor in. “No matter the ratings, no matter the merchandise sales, no matter the reactions, they were just ready to move on,” he said.
