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Neville No Longer Under WWE Contract


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45 minutes ago, Brian Fowler said:

Meltz's report says he's free to wrestle elsewhere and doesn't mention a 90 day.

If his contract literally did expire, I'd assume the 90-day clause is also null and void.  I mean, if the contract "expired" and there's still a 90 day no-complete clause in effect, then the contract is still in effect and really hasn't expired (legally).  Once a contract is truly (and legally) expired or terminated, there's no legal way to enforce any of its elements on the other party.

I've always assumed the no-compete clause is effectively severance pay.  The wrestler agrees not to work for any competing company and in return gets paid x amount for the next three months.  It depends how the clause is worded, of course, but I've always assumed wrestlers could decline the option and go work elsewhere immediately by declining to be paid for the 90 days following severance.  Honestly, it's sort of dumb to sign a contract which doesn't give you some sort of out in the event the company fires you, but I can see guys not caring about the fine print at the time.  And... Vince would probably have a clause inserted that bars the wrestler from ever working for anyone except the WWE if he thought he could get wrestlers to sign 

 

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5 minutes ago, Player One said:

If his contract literally did expire, I'd assume the 90-day clause is also null and void.  I mean, if the contract "expired" and there's still a 90 day no-complete clause in effect, then the contract is still in effect and really hasn't expired (legally).  Once a contract is truly (and legally) expired or terminated, there's no legal way to enforce any of its elements on the other party.

I've always assumed the no-compete clause is effectively severance pay.  The wrestler agrees not to work for any competing company and in return gets paid x amount for the next three months.  It depends how the clause is worded, of course, but I've always assumed wrestlers could decline the option and go work elsewhere immediately by declining to be paid for the 90 days following severance.  Honestly, it's sort of dumb to sign a contract which doesn't give you some sort of out in the event the company fires you, but I can see guys not caring about the fine print at the time.  And... Vince would probably have a clause inserted that bars the wrestler from ever working for anyone except the WWE if he thought he could get wrestlers to sign 

 

At least reportedly they had frozen his contract so the time wasn't running on it due to his breech so I'm assuming they negotiated some kind of release.

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2 hours ago, Brian Fowler said:

At least reportedly they had frozen his contract so the time wasn't running on it due to his breech so I'm assuming they negotiated some kind of release.

Didn't know that.  Didn't they do the same thing with Rey at one point?

I have no idea how that is legal.  I mean, I guess it's written into the contract?  Or at least the contract language is so vague, WWE feels like it would hold up?  

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19 hours ago, ComingToAmerica said:

NXTUK is just a barn on a content farm though, taping once a month at most.

You'd be surprised at how much you can get done in a full day of taping. Assuming that you are running 50% twenty minute events and 50% ten minute events (I know I'm over-simplifying it), you're looking at roughly thirty-six events out of an eight-hour day of taping and frequently they run much longer than that as about 70% of your costs are in set-up and tear down so it makes sense to squeeze as much as you can get out of a "day" of taping.

Also, I know that it's real easy to be more than a bit gun-shy of anything WWE-related (with good reason), but once you attach those three magical letters, (N-X-T) to the product good things seem to follow. With the roster they've already hinted at, the infrastructure  and on-air personalities connected (such as Johnny Saint), it would take the combined efforts of VKM AND Kevin Dunn to screw up NXT-UK, and fortunately for us, I don't think either of them are going to be anywhere near the product. I think this is pretty much Trips' baby and if he can replicate any reasonable portion of the aesthetic and developmental success that NXT has enjoyed in the States he'll be left well enough alone to do as he pleases. The whole idea of replication of NXT in various global regions is so old-school territory-based in concept that it has to be Trips behind it, Vince's mind just doesn't work that way.

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8 hours ago, Player One said:

Didn't know that.  Didn't they do the same thing with Rey at one point?

I have no idea how that is legal.  I mean, I guess it's written into the contract?  Or at least the contract language is so vague, WWE feels like it would hold up?  

I believe with Rey they added an extra year because of his missed injury time.

They froze Bryan's until he got the GM role

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8 hours ago, OSJ said:

You'd be surprised at how much you can get done in a full day of taping. Assuming that you are running 50% twenty minute events and 50% ten minute events (I know I'm over-simplifying it), you're looking at roughly thirty-six events out of an eight-hour day of taping and frequently they run much longer than that as about 70% of your costs are in set-up and tear down so it makes sense to squeeze as much as you can get out of a "day" of taping.

Also, I know that it's real easy to be more than a bit gun-shy of anything WWE-related (with good reason), but once you attach those three magical letters, (N-X-T) to the product good things seem to follow. With the roster they've already hinted at, the infrastructure  and on-air personalities connected (such as Johnny Saint), it would take the combined efforts of VKM AND Kevin Dunn to screw up NXT-UK, and fortunately for us, I don't either of them are going to be anywhere near the product. I think this is pretty much Trips' baby and if he can replicate any reasonable portion of the aesthetic and developmental success that NXT has enjoyed in the States he'll be left well enough alone to do as he pleases. The whole idea of replication of NXT in various global regions is so old-school territory-based in concept that it has to be Trips behind it, Vince's mind just doesn't work that way.

That's fine, but you haven't told me where the money is yet.

Plus you can get a lot of a day of tapings, but it limits you in what you can get out of any individual guy. It's quite unusual for people to wrestle multiple feature matches on a NXT taping currently.

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Just a thought, did Neville move back to the UK in order to make a 'freeze' harder to enforce?

It's one thing for McDevitt to get a ludicrous contract enforced in the US; getting it enforced by a foreign court might be trickier. If he was quite content to not wrestle in the USA, could he maybe have told WWE to go fuck themselves?

Probably hard to give a definite yes/no answer to that, but the question might have tipped the balance towards WWE coming to terms. 

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1 hour ago, ComingToAmerica said:

That's fine, but you haven't told me where the money is yet.

Plus you can get a lot of a day of tapings, but it limits you in what you can get out of any individual guy. It's quite unusual for people to wrestle multiple feature matches on a NXT taping currently.

Fair enough. I think it relatively safe to say that with the recent contracts money is not a big worry for WWE at this point. They are a publicly-traded company in expansion mode, it's always tough to predict the market, but traditionally this is the sort of activity that gets shareholders doing happy dances.

As to your second point I think the operative word is "currently". We really are heading into uncharted waters at this point and it may well be that WWE has no better idea than you or me how this new template is going to work out. What we DO know is that WWE has absolutely no problem demanding insane travel on the part of its employ... I mean "independent contractors". It's not much of a stretch to imagine having individuals taping two or three matches at each session. It wasn't all that long ago that taping days were generally sunrise until well after dark affairs with three to four complete shows coming out of a standard taping day. Sure, there are potential problems with this sort of approach, but I sort of think it likely that this whole concept is a work-in-progress with nothing set in stone until they figure out what works and what doesn't. 

The most telling thing thus far in the big picture is that the company has come to grips with the fact that you don't need every event to be live television and that one can accomplish quite a bit by judicious taping without really sacrificing much of anything. While I certainly enjoy live events, the trade-off that the company gets by being able to overdub and edit as they fit seems to be a huge plus with very little in the way of negatives other than the boogeyman of "SPOILERS", hell, WWE itself is the worst offender when it comes to letting the cat out of the bag. I'll be perfectly happy to see an end to the "What?" and "CM Punk" chants. I don't have any problem with people entertaining themselves at an event, but the two examples I gave descended into self-parody a longass time ago.

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He would be welcome fresh blood in Impact or NJPW Juniors, and as others have said, has shown that he can bring it with the mic as well as the wrestling.

Would be great to see him storming in as a newcomer in Impact clashing with the likes of Sami Callahan or Brian Cage.

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My understanding is that Neville wanted to have higher role in WWE than what he was getting and thats why he left. Due to that I think that he is not likely to sign with NJPW:

1. There are lots of heavyweights already and many of them are underutilized already. While his wrestling is great I don't think that he really is a draw so outside of G1 spot and one or two failed title challenges (like for IC or USA titles) a year I don't see what else he'd be doing outside of filling up multiman tags.

2. He might be good fill-in for Juniors while Hiromu is out... but they already have Ishimori who could fill same role and I feel like Ishimori/Hiromu II for Hiromu's return would be way bigger in Japan than Neville/Hiromu.

What I expect to happen is that he'll sign with RoH or Impact where he could become a consistent part of main event scene. And maybe get some work in NJPW for limited dates like what someone like Cobb is getting now.

Or maybe he'll just become a new leader of Bullet Club and I'm full of shit.

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5 hours ago, Archibald said:

My understanding is that Neville wanted to have higher role in WWE than what he was getting and thats why he left.

There's a difference between getting some NJPW dates and proving yourself, and getting shunted into the sidelines in a place where you have proved yourself.

I think we'll see, but I think he's got plenty of options. He's got plenty of 'dream matchups' here in the UK, though it depends on what he wants to charge obviously.

Edit: apparently exacerbating the WWE situation was Aries making more money for less dates on the Independents.

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4 hours ago, alstein said:

Do you think there's a chance Hiromu returns as a heavy?  I've wanted heavyweight Hiromu ever since the CEO tag match.

At that point they may as well just get rid of the junior division. 

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