There's a long-standing rule in professional wrestling. That is, you don't go into business for yourself. There were rumors last year that Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn had gotten themselves in hot water for not following directions to the letter and this year, it appears another WWE Superstar may have ruffled the wrong feathers. That someone is Big Cass.
Pro Wrestling Sheet is reporting Big Cass has upset some very important decision-makers in WWE by going against a directive given to him before a segment involving a little person on SmackDown Live. As WWE was trying to set the stage for Cass' match with Daniel Bryan at Backlash, the idea was to sell that Cass was not happy with Bryan because he was getting a push and more publicity even though he was smaller and not as important. Cass used a little person to bang home his point.
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The idea was to parade the little person (who was dressed as Bryan) around the ring and then give him a big boot. After the boot, Cass was supposed to leave the ring. Cass asked if he could take things one step further by also throwing punches at the actor after the boot to which both the producers of the segment and Vince McMahon himself shot down.
Instead of taking orders, Cass proceeded to go ahead with his idea, lay in punches, stand on him and then slap the little person around.
Where this rumor may go off the rails a bit is that referees ran down to the ring to stop Cass from his attack and it doesn't seem logical that refs would be standing by and ready to do so if Cass was just supposed to leave without taking things too far. Clearly, WWE will likely not address the issue if there is one but the speculation seems to be this is why Cass was not on the most recent edition of SmackDown Live and why all footage of the physicality after the big boot was not included in video or photos of the event on WWE's sites.