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Duke Hudson confirms his departure from WWE in a video skit

Aaron Rift

On Monday night, Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful.com reported that WWE released Duke Hudson in January of 2025. While speaking during Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer of F4WOnline.com discussed Hudson’s run with the company…

“He had a good babyface comeback. I was a little surprised, but this is the deal. He’s 34 years old. And I think the decision was essentially that we’ve had him in developmental for what’s it been, six years? And we just don’t think he’s, you know, he had his one shot on the main roster, [Paul] Heyman saw a lot in him. He saw a big guy, good look, moves. Well, he wasn’t ready, but Heyman thought, you know, if you remember, when Heyman started on the Raw thing, his big thing was to bring in all kinds of new guys and push and push guys who hadn’t been pushed before. And you know, the idea was, the ratings are going to go down, and in a year, 18 months, whatever, once these guys get over, it’ll be all fresh, won’t be stale, and they’ll be it’ll be a younger crowd and a younger audience because remember, at the time. Yeah, they were doing shit with younger viewers. I mean, that’s where AEW was beating them. So that was, like, the goal, you know. And Duke was, you know, a guy he tried with for, like, three weeks, and then Vince [McMahon] got the three-week thing. And it’s like, ‘Nah.’ And that was that, and he was gone.

Now, of course, Vince is gone, so it doesn’t matter, but you know, [Paul ‘Triple H’] Levesque is the one who makes the calls, and for whatever reason, you know, he didn’t see Duke as a main roster guy. So at some point, when you’re, you know, when you’re 34, and you don’t see him as a main roster guy, and he’d been there for six years, it’s kind of like that’s the way it works.” (quote courtesy of WrestlingNews.co)

Hudson confirmed his WWE departure in a video published to his Twitter/X account. Hudson produced a skit where he interviewed himself about being “fired” from the company.