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WWE Releases Damien Sandow, King Barrett, Hornswoggle, Alex Riley & More

TJR Wrestling

World Wrestling Entertainment has slowly been announcing releases of WWE Superstars throughout the day. So far there is a total of eight WWE Superstars who have been released. The following is the most recent statement from WWE.com about the releases.

“WWE has come to terms on the release of WWE Superstars Damien Sandow, King Barrett, Santino Marella, Cameron, Hornswoggle, Alex Riley, El Torito and Zeb Colter as of today, Friday, May 6, 2016. WWE wishes them the best in all of their future endeavors.”

Wade Barrett took to Twitter this morning to announce his retirement and how he’ll be taking a break from the wrestling business. His contract was set to expire next month, but he worked out a deal with management that would dissolve the contract early. The following is Barrett’s statement.

Cameron wrote the following via Twitlonger.

“For now…

“Wells it’s been a pretty intense few days to say the least?. I appreciate the outpouring of love and support that I have received today. I would like to take the time to appropriately thank all the fans and the WWE but before I take my final bow, let me throw back a few and take this all in lol! Stay tuned for my full statement.. ?”

The rest are tweets from Santino and El Torito on their release and a statement from Hornswoggle about how grateful he is to have worked with WWE. Sandow, Riley and Colter have yet to comment.

Mark’s reaction: The two releases that surprised me here was Damien Sandow and Alex Riley. The news that King Barrett was leaving has been public knowledge for a while now, and I honestly forgot Hornswoggle, El Torito and Santino were even still with the company. Cameron I remember being on a few episodes of NXT within the last few months, but not a huge shock they let her go.

Riley’s release surprised me because I thought he was going to get a push in NXT. He’s been wrestling again in NXT with a new look and attitude that I thought had the potential to work. However, even if the gimmick didn’t work, I always thought he’d hang around in some sort of commentating fashion. That won’t be the case though.

Sandow’s release surprised me, but it probably shouldn’t have. He was barely being used on Raw and Smackdown, despite being over with the fans. The same could have been said for Zack Ryder pre-Wrestlemania 32, but the difference between Ryder and Sandow is that Ryder was at least a part of The Hyper Bros in NXT and staying busy. I thought Sandow could have really benefited from being in NXT for a while, but now we’ll never get to know.

I’ll also miss Colter a little bit too. I was never the biggest fan of his, but he was a good speaker and I just like seeing managers in wrestling. There’s rumors that there could be more releases announced by WWE soon, so if that’s the case we’ll be keeping you updated.

Will you be missing any of these eight former WWE Superstars? Let us know in the comment section below.