The unexpected round of WWE releases—including high-profile names such as Braun Strowman, Shayna Baszler, Dakota Kai, and others—has sparked widespread speculation about who is ultimately behind these decisions in the current TKO Group Holdings structure.
While some initially pointed fingers at higher-level corporate leadership, new reports suggest that WWE Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque holds the final word when it comes to roster cuts.
During a recent livestream, Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful offered a firm take on Triple H’s influence behind the scenes, stating:
“From what I was told, if he wants somebody to be there, they’re going to be there. Gonna be there. Let me be clear about that — if he wanted them there, they would be there. They would absolutely be there.”
Additional insights explaining how the decision-making hierarchy reportedly works came in the form of the following statement from Ibou of WrestlePurists on Twitter/X:
“Triple H is the final say on any roster personnel decisions. Most non-injured wrestlers that are benched from the TV that he books are candidates to get cut whenever he’s told it’s time to shed roster salary. The priority is that their books, and profit margins look good to shareholders after every quarter, which is why to juice up numbers, they shed contracts. Figuring out the WHEN on these matters is Ari and Nick. Figuring out WHO goes is Paul Levesque. I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you’d have to be impressively naïve to believe otherwise. The actual WWE product, roster, talent acquisitions, and business transactions with other promotions is Triple H’s domain. This was always going to be the end result of an influx of WWE ID talent trickling in through the system on the cheap and other avenues of acquiring talent. Especially when the base salary for main roster talent increased to $350,000/year. The people that scapegoat TKO solely and pretend HHH has nothing to do with it when being mad at releases need to get real. Ari Emmanuel is likely unable to name more than 15-20 talent on the entire WWE roster.”
At this time, WWE has not made any official comments on the leadership behind the roster cuts. The talent layoffs came just 24 hours after a corporate shake-up that included the departure of longtime employee Ryan Pappolla, adding further layers to the conversation about internal restructuring and cost-cutting priorities.
As of this writing, WWE has released a total of 17 Superstars in total, as well as one additional rumored release that has yet to be confirmed to us by a second source.
We will keep you posted with the absolute best ongoing coverage of the massive WWE releases as updates continue to surface.
What do YOU think of the annual post-WrestleMania “spring cleaning” that WWE has done to their main roster and the WWE NXT roster? Sound off with YOUR thoughts in our “Comments” section below.
