What is being said about why there were more WWE departures in 2026 compared to 2025

While speaking on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer of F4WOnline.com discussed why there were more WWE departures in 2026 compared to 2025. Meltzer stated the following about TKO (the parent company of WWE)’s thought process on cutting talent…

“The story on the cuts being so many, there’s a couple of reasons behind it. What happened is essentially last year, they do cuts every single year, last year because they had basically just taken over the company and they were trying to be good guys and all that, right, so they didn’t order a lot of cuts last year. They kind of held back, so it’s kind of like a catch-up.

Developmental, they’re adding new people to developmental. The people who they figured aren’t going to make it, those were the ones cut. So you know.

The main roster cuts, essentially it was two things. Number one, all of the people who were brought up from NXT that got spots, essentially they wanted to remove a similar amount of people and they went to creative. It was creative that made the call as to who. They said like: ‘Who are you not planning on using? Who on the roster are you not planning on using? Give us X number of names.’

The number that were brought up and additional names from SmackDown, the reason being SmackDown at the end of this month, not next month, the end of this month, SmackDown is going to two hours. Therefore, there is an hour of less time of television, so therefore there is less time to put as many people on, so therefore there would be additional cuts on the SmackDown side. So that’s the story behind the number of cuts.” (quotes courtesy of WrestlePurists.com)