Lana Reveals Major Surprise About Her WWE Firing

WWE fired Lana in 2021.

Lana, aka CJ Perry, wrestled her last match in WWE on May 31, 2021. After two days, WWE released her due to budget cuts. In a recent interview on the podcast “Unwrapped,” Lana revealed WWE released her just two days after approving her participation in the reality TV series called The Surreal Life. She explained that while WWE gave the green light for the show, the release followed swiftly as part of WWE’s broader budget-cutting measures.

Lana believes WWE calculated that since she would be earning a significant amount for just a two-week reality series, they could cut costs by letting her go and replacing her with multiple other performers. She described the release as a business decision aligned with WWE’s financial priorities, rather than due to any negative performance issues on her part.

“Surreal Life came to WWE and asked, ‘Can we have [Lana]? And Vince [McMahon] and Johnny Ace approved it, and two days after they approved it, they let me go. I think I wouldn’t be surprised, like when I look back, I’m like okay again, I look at it on a business sense, so I’m like okay, they looked at it and they were like okay, she’s going to get paid a lot of money to go do Surreal Life for two weeks you know and this is a great opportunity.

We need a budget cut, you know, we can bring in three people for the amount that we pay her, so let’s let her go and do her thing, go become hopefully a bigger star, make her money, and yeah then we can always catch her on the flip side.” (From 4:31)

Lana Confirms Retirement From The Ring

“I got signed in 2013, and then I apparently retired in 2021. Apparently retired. [Was it contract expiration? Was it?] No, it was.. I actually had three more years on my contract. [So, you got released.] Yeah, I got released. I was on a 5-year contract. I covered two, which was such a great blessing because I was on a higher-paying tier, which was so awesome. [But you were killing it.] Yeah. But it got cut short.” (From 3:25)