Shawn Michaels Talks Dana Brooke’s WWE Release – “We’ve Made Adjustments”
According to Shawn Michaels, Dana Brooke’s release from WWE affected immediate plans for NXT and adjustments had to be made.
On September 21, multiple talents were released from their WWE contracts, including former World Heavyweight Champion Dolph Ziggler and NXT mainstay Mustafa Ali.
Dana Brooke was also among the names of those released from WWE, and she issued a heartfelt statement on social media to share how wrestling had affected her life in many positive ways.
Speaking on a media call ahead of NXT No Mercy, Shawn Michaels was asked by Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful if there were any releases that affected immediate plans for NXT, and Michaels named Brooke as one that caused some adjustments in the company.
“Yeah, well, so I think certainly, the main roster ones. Dana, Brooke, obviously, is something that caught us by surprise a little bit, because we had kind of a, you know, nice story going on there.”
Shawn Michaels Says Main Roster Talent Like Dana Brooke Have A Positive Experience In WWE NXT
Continuing, Michaels pointed out that this isn’t the first time NXT has had to make adjustments on the fly due to real life circumstances, and he said this sort of situation doesn’t feel as chaotic as it might have in the past.
“And I’ll say this, and I hope, I hope to God this doesn’t sound insensitive. It’s just that we, this is not the first time that we’ve gone through this. And it is something that, I’ll say this, in my world now, I guess maybe I’ve grown a little bit that these things don’t throw me into chaos, where I don’t get too nervous, or I don’t get too upset. We try not to allow the highs it takes too high and the lows to take us down too low. So yeah, we’ve made adjustments.”
Michaels went on to praise the main roster talent who’ve transitioned into roles in NXT, saying it helps ignite their passion for wrestling and they’ve been a joy to work with.
“You know, I absolutely, I’ll just say this, the talent that come from main roster to work here, I absolutely, I just enjoy the time with them. I really do. And I feel like we give them a love and a passion back for this line of work. I feel like they’re all better performers, whether they go back up to the main roster or they go somewhere else. I do know that their last experience with us is always a positive one. And that’s something that again, I think is, it’s important to me anyway, that they had that experience here at NXT.
“But I think those would be the two, I think, Sean, probably because I think those are the two that we had maybe the deepest into storylines down here. And so those are always times you got to make adjustments creatively. And, you know, we’ve done that in the case of Mustafa, obviously, we’re going to do that in the case of Dana as well.”
If you use any quotes from this transcription, please link back to this article with a h/t to TJR Wrestling.