WWE Stars Furious Over Shady Contract Negotiations

Source: PWTorch.com Newsletter

WWE Vice-President of Talent Relations John “Johnny Ace” Laurinaitis has a lot more heat than usual from the locker room right now. His position with the company is notorious for being a heat magnet, but the feeling of multiple wrestlers is that he’s being disingenuous with them. The PWTorch.com Newsletter reports that one wrestler swears he and Laurinaitis agreed to a specific merchandise percentage during contract negotiations, but when he received the contract he noticed that the figure was lower than what he agreed to.

The story goes that Laurinaitis urged the wrestler to sign a contract while promising that he’d take care of the merchandise percentage and other details after the fact. Once the wrestler signed the contract, he claims Laurinaitis refused to make the changes. The wrestler vented to friends and coworkers, and several claim to have had similar issues.

Another reason for Johnny Ace’s heat is over the way he handles wrestlers who are being released. He’s famous for telling wrestlers he cuts that the decision was made because the creative team doesn’t have anything for him or her. However, one former WWE creative member says that creative isn’t given any warning 99% of the time when a wrestler is about to be released. When Laurinaitis was called on this, he told people that his predecessor Jim Ross told him this as standard protocol. This also rubbed people the wrong way because they felt he was trying to pass the buck onto Ross.