WWE Releases Brodus Clay, Evan Bourne, Aksana, and Many More

It seems like it’s been a couple of years since WWE had one of their infamous sprees of releasing talent, but today a major housecleaning took place that released an array of talent ranging from those that haven’t been seen in months to some that were seen as recent as Monday’s RAW.  Some say the releases were caused by the lack of success/revenue from the WWE Network, but in reality, some of these talents haven’t been on TV in so long it’s surprising they were even still with the company.

The complete list of released talent is: Evan Bourne, Brodus Clay, Drew McIntyre, Aksana, Jinder Mahal, Teddy Long, Curt Hawkins, Yoshi Tatsu, Camacho, JTG,  and referee Marc Harris.

Of the talents above, Aksana was just seen on Monday’s RAW taking on Alicia Fox and was humiliated by Fox after the match which appears to have been her send-off.  Also, 3MB members Jinder Mahal and Drew McIntyre have been on TV regularly as part of the  3MB vs. Los Matadores feud, although the spotlight had mainly been on Hornswoggle and El Torito of course.  McIntyre has to be seen as a major flop at this point seeing as he once had the “chosen one” gimmick that was endorsed by Vince McMahon himself, but he just never clicked in that role as it seems.

Brodus Clay has recently appeared at NXT and it seemed like they were probably going to repackage him to some degree so he could be the monster he had the potential to be.  Evan Bourne is an odd case; after suffering a foot injury 2 years ago then returning only to be re-injured again, Bourne has been ready to go for quite a few months but never got the comeback call.

As for the rest of the talent, Teddy Long had a long run with WWE since the late 90s when he came in as a referee.  He has filled a role as a ringside manager as well as a longtime GM role on SmackDown for many years. Long had pretty much done all he could at this point, so his release wasn’t much of a surprise.  It’s surprising that Hawkins, Tatsu, and JTG even hung around this long as they haven’t been utilized on the main shows in a very long time.  Camacho had only been used strictly at NXT recently, and there’s no real explanation as to why Harris was released.

With all these talents now on the market, it will be interesting to see if TNA has any interest in them (Bourne once worked there so a return wouldn’t be a shocker) or even if Jeff Jarrett’s new “Global Force Wrestling” promotion who has been actively scouting talent will pick any of them up.