Vince McMahon’s Return Caused Eric Young To Ask For WWE Release
Eric Young was under contract with WWE, but he never made his return to the company due to Vince McMahon’s presence.
During his 20+ year career as a pro wrestling, Eric Young is most known as TNA/Impact Wrestling guy, but he has been under WWE contract twice as well.
The veteran Eric Young worked for WWE from 2016 to early 2020 as part of a group called Sanity. Young was the leader of the group that started out in NXT, then in 2018 they were moved to Smackdown and had a decent run. Young was released by the Vince McMahon regime in April 2020.
Following Vince McMahon’s “retirement” in July 2022, Paul “Triple H” Levesque was running WWE and Young returned to WWE in November 2022.
It is now being reported by Fightful Select that Young requested his WWE release in April 2023 right after Endeavor announced that they had acquired WWE on the day after WrestleMania 39. According to Fightful, “Eric Young didn’t want to work with Vince McMahon after the Endeavor deal was announced.”
The report notes also that Young was granted his WWE release in April 2023 and his 90-day no-compete clause expired last week, which means he can now work for another wrestling company again. There were apparently some creative plans for Young to return after WrestleMania, but there was no confirmation on what those plans were.
As reported by Fightful, WWE sources confirmed that Eric Young didn’t want to work for Vince McMahon due to moral, creative and personal reasons.
While Eric Young has chosen to walk away from WWE, Fightful reports that Young is apparently the only wrestler that asked for a release due to Vince McMahon’s return.
Even though Young didn’t return to WWE on-screen physically, there are some people that believe his voice was used in a Bray Wyatt video earlier this year. Young has a very distinctive voice, but it’s not known if it was really him.
There is an Impact Wrestling Slammiversary pay-per-view taking place tonight and Eric Young is rumored to be the tag team partner of Scott D’Amore against Bully Ray & Deaner. Young was “killed” by Deaner during his Impact Wrestling departure last year. Young goes way back with D’Amore in their Team Canada days nearly 20 years ago, so he would make logical sense as D’Amore’s tag team partner.
During his TNA/Impact Wrestling run from 2004 to 2016 and again from 2020 to 2022, Eric Young was a comedy figure for many years before becoming a main event talent. Young is a former two-time TNA/Impact World Heavyweight Champion and held numerous other titles in his career.
UPDATE: Eric Young returned to Impact Wrestling at Slammiversary tonight.