WWE Hall of Famer Kevin Nash isn’t feeling the financial boom that WWE has touted under TKO Group Holdings. While the company continues to post record profits and major business milestones, Nash says his personal cut of WWE’s success has gone in the opposite direction.
On a recent episode of his “Kliq This” podcast, Nash revealed that both he and fellow Hall of Famer Sean “X-Pac” Waltman have seen their royalty checks shrink in recent months. According to Nash, the latest payout came as a major surprise — and not in a good way. He said,
“I was talking to Mr. Waltman this week — we had our weekly update. We both got our royalty checks, and I called him. He’s laughing on the other end of the phone and says, ‘Obviously, you got your royalty check.’ I said, ‘Holy f**k. After the last one was good, this one was rotten — it was half. But hey, what are you gonna do?’”
Nash went on to explain that, in the past, WWE used to provide a detailed breakdown of exactly what merchandise or video releases generated his royalties. That level of transparency, he said, is now gone. Nash stated,
“It used to list what you sold — shirts, DVDs, whatever. Now it’s just this vague ‘nWo property’ thing. You can’t tell what’s what anymore.”
The two-time WWE Hall of Famer suggested that these changes began following WWE’s merger with the UFC’s parent company Endeavor under the new TKO Group Holdings umbrella. He also pointed to the company’s ongoing partnership with Fanatics — which took over WWE’s merchandise operations — as part of the shift. Nash said,
“Things got weird after Fanatics came in — yeah, it got weird when they sold to TKO. So this is where the TKO weirdness starts. Because they, you know, cut things.”
Nash, who often discusses the business side of wrestling on his show, has previously stated that he holds stock in WWE. That makes him both a shareholder and one of the many former stars still collecting royalties from the company’s vast video library and merchandise catalog — including the highly lucrative nWo brand.
While WWE has continued to report strong quarterly revenue under TKO’s ownership, Nash’s comments suggest that not everyone connected to the company is seeing those gains reflected in their own bottom line.
