Speculation that Corey Graves was trying to get himself fired from WWE with social media post

On Monday night, WWE announcer Corey Graves issued a public statement about his status with the company following his move back to the NXT brand. Graves later wrote that he would have “a lot to say” on the January 14th 2025 edition of WWE NXT but didn’t end up appearing on the show.

Graves’ post remained online for about a day until it was deleted. During Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer of F4WOnline.com discussed the situation…

“Everyone in WWE that I’ve talked to said it wasn’t an angle. He hasn’t been fired yet…..I’m gonna say this is September-ish, maybe early October. I just remember when they first made the announcement of the announcing changes and that Pat McAfee would be back and everything. Basically, when Michael Cole had moved to SmackDown, but it was only gonna be temporary, and Joe Tessitore was starting with Raw, and we were told it’s only temporary, he’s gonna be moved to SmackDown. At the time I was told that the Raw announce team would be, in January, Michael Cole and Pat McAfee, and the SmackDown team would be Corey Graves and Joe Tessitore. Maybe a couple of weeks ago, not that long ago, I just kinda asked, ‘So is it Joe Tessitore and Corey Graves that are gonna be the hosts of SmackDown?’ since that’s what I had already been told. And the answer was, ‘To be determined. It’s not determined’.

Now, I guess it was a couple of weeks ago when Corey Graves got the word that Wade Barrett was gonna replace him on that show, and he wasn’t happy. I don’t know if he got the word he was gonna start in January in NXT. I don’t know the situation there. I just know that that’s when he found out that he wasn’t gonna be on SmackDown as he presumed he would be. He was genuinely unhappy.”

“Now, why you would go on Twitter and do all this? I can’t answer that question. There’s people there who think that he was trying to get fired and that’s why he did it. If he was trying to get fired, they probably aren’t gonna fire him because I don’t think they want him going to AEW if they give him a release. They could also suspend him, which maybe they’ve done for all we know. It doesn’t have to be announced that they’ve suspended him.” (quotes courtesy of WrestlingNews.co)