Maxine Talks About Why WWE Exerts Such Control Over Their Talent

During an interview with Wrestling Inc, Karlee Perez (formerly known as Catrina in Lucha Underground and Maxine in WWE) spoke on why WWE exerts such control over their contracted talent.

"They pick and choose [when] they want to pursue certain things because then they get a piece of it, and that piece of it is large. So if you’re doing the work and you’re putting in the time and you’re doing the acting classes or you’re out there hustling for yourself, why should they get a piece of that? There has to be some kind of ground and understanding, and so many of the talent, I get it, they want to grow and expand as much as possible. And that makes total sense.

They’re in front of, you know, millions of people already, and they can expand a brand. And of course, Dwayne is one of the largest we can think of with brand expanding from wrestling into Hollywood. So, why wouldn’t you want to do that? They look at him and that’s inspirational. If he can do it, well then, I can expand this brand, but now, WWE has that control on who gets to and who does and doesn’t win and why and where. They do it because they can. I don’t think they do it for any other reason, just the fact that they can do it, and you’re not going to say no.

And the people who do say no like myself, that’s looked down upon. So the fact that you can go and expand in something else, they don’t want people knowing that because that’s scary, that’s nervous to them. So they don’t want the talent knowing that, ‘wow, people have left and went and did other things and expanded on it.’ That’s not the kind of image they want to push."