Former WWE performer Jack Swagger says he gets why many of the promotion's current stars are unhappy.
A few wrestlers have left the company during the last few months, while several others are said to be disenchanted and are looking to leave. Luke Harper recently sought a release but had another year tacked on to his current deal, while the likes of Dean Ambrose and Tye Dillinger have walked away.
Swagger, who requested a release from WWE in 2017, spoke to Pro Wrestling 24/7 in a recent interview and claimed he isn't surprised to learn that people are looking to leave the company.
“No, it’s not a shock," he said (h/t Wrestling Inc.). They know exactly how they treat their talent. They know the contracts that they have assigned and they know exactly why we’re unhappy with the way they treat us. So it’s not a shock to me.
“I’m very thankful now looking back that I was able to leave when I did. I’m very thankful for my 12 years there because it allowed me to do so much. It allows me to do so much now because of my background, that notch on my resume, but at the same time there’s a lot of unhappy people there, and it’s not just because of the politics.
“You’re traveling 200 days a year, sometimes you’re only home 36 hours a week, away from your family and then you go out there and you have these storylines that are just bad, and you’re like, ‘I’m putting my body through this for THIS’? Like it would be a lot easier if the Superstars up there didn’t care and they just did what they were told, but unfortunately, you can’t do a job like that.
“You have to care, you have to wear your heart on your sleeve in that ring, and you have to care about what you are doing, and so it doesn’t surprise me at all that people are leaving because it is a problem they need to address.”
What This Means
Given that WWE doesn't have an offseason, it's bound to take a toll. Stars are probably happy to stick around when they're running favorable storylines. But putting in such a volume of work and not being satisfied with one's usage must be quite discouraging.