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WWE Head Trainer Bill DeMott Quits

By John Canton • Published 6th March 2015
TJR Wrestling

Bill DeMott, who has been head trainer in WWE for several years, announced on Twitter on Friday that he has quit. It’s not a move that is shocking after all of the allegations made against DeMott by former developmental wrestlers.

Since he used the Twitlonger program, here’s what he wrote there in the full statement: “I deny the recent allegations made about me, however, to avoid any embarrassment or damage to the WWE, I’ve decided to step down from my role effective immediately.”

Here’s more from Dave Meltzer of F4Wonline.com:

This came on the heels of additional allegations popping up, including indie wrestler Terra Calaway alleging last night that DeMott used a variety of racist terms to address a Middle Eastern wrestler at a tryout camp as well as one anonymous wrestler alleging he refused to do anything about a strength and conditioning coach sexually harrassing the women.

DeMott, who started wrestling in 1990 and is best known to fans as Hugh Morrus and later Captain Hugh G. Rection (a Vince Russo creation) in WCW, was first used as a trainer within WWE’s developmental system when he was brought in for Tough Enough’s third season to replace Tazz as the “hard-ass” drill sergeant coach archetype. He eventually moved on to a full-time trainer role for WWE in Deep South Wrestling, where complaints started to crop up about his treatment of the developmental talent, leading to his firing in January 2007 and Tom Prichard replacing him. A few months later, WWE ended their relationship with Deep South with no notice after someone from the office visited and was shocked by the overall state of the operation.

DeMott was brought back for the 2011 Tough Enough reboot and installed in Florida as head trainer the following year. The same type of stories started to crop up, though, to the point that when it was announced that the Performance Center, opened in 2013, would be recorded by the office around the clock, it was not exactly uncommon to hear people talk about if that was a response to the DeMott allegations.

According to a report from PWInsider, DeMott has resigned from WWE completely.

It’s a pretty big story because DeMott’s been there a while and his work affected people in developmental as well as the main roster. It won’t affect WWE’s on screen programming that much because he had no impact on that. It’s just one of those things that is big from a company standpoint.

TJR Thoughts: There are two sides of thinking here. Some people are going to think that he was too tough on developmental talent while others might think that’s just how the business is. A lot of the accusations have come from people no longer in WWE. While they might be saying a lot of things that are true, they could be considered bitter employees by WWE so that’s why they might just dismiss their claims.

It’s one of those things where there’s no way of really knowing what’s true unless you were there on a regular basis. For us to sit here to say somebody is lying or not is tough. What we know as fans is the wrestling business is very tough to get into, it’s tough to make it as far as WWE and even tougher to get to be a long term member of the main roster. There are thousands of wrestlers around the world, yet only what 50-60 that make the main roster at a time? Only half of them get consistent TV time while others have to ride it out. Not easy at all.

It’s an unfortunate situation. DeMott doesn’t seem like he wanted to step down, but he was either forced out or felt like he was the best thing he can do. Good luck to him in whatever he decides to do in the future and hopefully WWE can move on from this as well.

UPDATE: It was announced on Friday that Jason Albert aka Tensai (real name Matt Bloom) will be head trainer for now.

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