Former WWE Superstar Criticizes Contracts: "We're So Clearly Not Independent Contractors"

During an interview with Forbes.com, former WWE star Dijak discussed the differences between a wrestler being released and a contract expiring:

“There are pros and cons to both approaches. I think there’s a better way to do this. I don’t support releasing people. I don’t think it’s a secret at this point that nobody’s a fan of the WWE contract. That isn’t a real contract, because they can just release you at any point for any reason. I think that’s silly nonsense. I don’t know why that’s allowed to be legal. It just feels illegal to me, and I feel like nobody’s taken the time and monetary effort to challenge the legality of it."

"We’re so clearly not independent contractors. That’s the most made-up nonsense in the history of the world, and people have talked about this ad nauseam. Something needs to be done about it. It’s just silly. It’s silliness. That being said, if you’re going to allow people’s contracts to run out, I think there needs to be more communication, obviously. I’m a fantastic example of that. One of the strangest parts of this is that they started informing people like, ‘Hey, we’re not going to be renewing your contract.’"

"And it was usually about a month out, if not, a little bit more. I think they allowed Lacey Evans’ contract to run out. I think they allowed SCRYPTS’ contract to run out, but they informed these people with a pretty decent amount of time. For whatever reason, mine was a lot later. I don’t know if that was because they were trying to bleed every last speck of wrestling out of me, because I was on WWE Speed a week ago. Like 10 days ago. I was on WWE Speed, and it was the pinned Tweet on WWE last week. So I don’t know if the plan was to just get every last drop out of the sponge, and then break it off clean."

"I don’t think that it’s the most ethical way to do this because I’ve been left kind of scrambling, and maybe that’s on me. Maybe I should have planned for the worst better. That’s easier said than done because you can’t confirm bookings and stuff while you still think you’re going to work for WWE. That’s just not how it works. I can’t say, ‘yes, I’m going to be on your show in July, and then re-sign with WWE.’ That screws everybody over. So as soon as I could, I started scrambling, trying to book these dates, but that’s not easy. A couple weeks out, two or three weeks out from a show in July. So my dates are kind of thin right now, and I’m not getting paid by WWE. Not great. That’s not a great business practice. What do they care about my money? That doesn’t concern them."

"But just in terms of the ethicalness of it, I think that there’s a better way to do it that doesn’t desecrate their bottom line, and I think would be just fine to do. I don’t think WWE needed me on a main event match or a speed match. I don’t think that made the company tons of money. I think that was just—I happened to be there. So this could have been a lot better of a process. What was relayed to me through the grapevine is that this was a decision that came down to the wire and it just went one way or the other instead of the other. Maybe that’s actually factually accurate. I don’t believe it is. I think that this decision was made a long time ago.”