Baron Corbin says he signed a multi-year deal to come back to WWE, and that he expects it to be the last contract of his career.
Corbin confirmed the deal in an interview with The Sportster, and framed the return around one gap on his record.
“This is going to be a great run for me. Signing a good multi-year deal, coming back, I’m going to really accomplish something. I have a lot of unfinished goals,” Corbin said. “I was never a world champion. I need to have that on my list of accomplishments. So coming back and making a statement at SummerSlam in front of all those people, it was unreal.”
Asked whether he sees this as his final deal, he did not hesitate.
“100%. I think the sky’s the limit. Like I said, I signed a good contract, and my thought process is, this is probably the last one I sign,” Corbin said. “Realistically, how much time do I have left to do this before I’m a step slower, or I’m not able to bring my A game and the physicality I want?”
He said the reason for thinking that way is what he does not want to become.
“I never want to be a guy that hangs on too long. I want to be at 110% when I walk through those curtains,” he said. “That’s the entrance, that’s the in-ring, that’s after, that’s the promo. All of those things, I want it to be 100, 110%.”
Corbin turns 42 on September 13, which is the arithmetic behind the answer. A multi-year deal signed at 41 runs into his mid-forties, and he is describing it as the window rather than the start of one.
He left WWE in November 2024 when his contract expired and was not renewed, ending a run that began in August 2012. He spent the next 18 months working in Mexico, Europe and Australia under the name Bishop Dyer, taking bookings with MLW, CMLL, Maple Leaf Pro and GCW, and held the MLW World Tag Team Championship alongside Donovan Dijak for more than a year as the Skyscrapers.
MLW turned his exit into television. The promotion ran an on-screen contract dispute for him through June, with Rich Bocchini reporting on Fusion that Dyer was playing hardball and making outlandish demands, and Court Bauer locked him out and stripped him of the tag titles on the July 4 episode. Dijak kept his half on the condition that he found a new partner the same night.
Six days later Corbin was on WWE television. Dave Meltzer had broken the story of the negotiations in May and Fightful Select followed it, reporting that people inside WWE had been surprised by the idea and that Corbin had kept a good relationship with the company since leaving.
He has said he never asked for the job back, and that the approach came from WWE, starting with a message from a writer and leading to a Zoom call with Paul Levesque. The two agreed to strip the character back to beating people up and winning matches.
Corbin returned on the July 10 episode of SmackDown, interrupting Trick Williams against Carmelo Hayes, and beat Williams for the United States Championship on night two of SummerSlam on August 2 in Minneapolis. It was his second reign with the title, after a run in 2017. Fightful Select reported afterwards that the decision to put the belt on him had been made only recently and had surprised people backstage.
He held it for five weeks. Williams took it back at Sunday Night’s Main Event in Atlanta on Sunday, in a match that only existed because Corbin had offered Lil Yachty five minutes and could not finish inside them.
Corbin’s career to this point includes the 2016 Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal, the 2017 Money in the Bank contract and the 2019 King of the Ring, but no world title. The interview was recorded before Sunday’s show.
