The bombshell news broke on Tuesday that Dean Ambrose will be leaving WWE after his contract expires in April. This news was confirmed by WWE in a statement.
This came as a pretty big surprise to wrestling fans. Dean has been a major part of WWE television over the past several years.
On PWInsider ELITE audio (subscribe here), Mike Johnson provided some interesting information about what happened backstage at Smackdown after the Dean news broke.
It turns out that WWE had meetings with several Superstars at Smackdown. Here is a quote (via Wrestling News):
“After the Dean Ambrose news came out on late Monday/early Tuesday, there was a buzz of activity backstage at SmackDown as anybody who had a contract that was coming up in the next year or two was pulled into rooms and spoken to by management about signing longer form deals. All the wrestlers were sitting around looking at each other and going ‘would you look at this? this is crazy!’”
There definitely was the realization that people could potentially leave to go to AEW. WWE might have been paying attention before to it and monitoring it as Triple H said but there was definitely a cause and effect between Dean Ambrose making the decision that he is leaving and that news coming out and everyone buzzing about it and then yesterday at SmackDown people being spoken to about deals.”
My Take: I am happy for all of the wrestlers. It seems like the increased competition is going to result in them getting raises.
On a related note, check out some (conspiracy theory) reasons why Dean leaving might be a work.