Former WWE Superstar Alberto Del Rio was fired by WWE recently for punching out a WWE social media person. Apparently the social media guy is not well liked and said a racist comment to Del Rio. Of which, Del Rio clocked him for saying it. You cannot blame the guy for it. However, with one company firing Del Rio, that left the door open for another to hire him. TNA offered Del Rio a chance to come to the company only two hours after his WWE release was official.
TNA is known for hiring any WWE Superstar who is on the street. Del Rio has been planning to leave WWE when his contract ended soon, as he is getting older and would like a lighter schedule. He also planned to go back to Mexico and wrestle at AAA , so the idea was always to end up in Mexico again. It seems Del Rio told this to TNA officials, but in their desperate attempt to bring stars in, they offered Del Rio something a little crazy.
TNA offered Del Rio an opportunity to be the TNA World Heavyweight Champion immediately upon his signing with the company. Del Rio currently has a 90-day no compete clause in his contract, so he would not be able to sign with TNA until around late November. However, that is not the plan for Del Rio as mentioned above. Del Rio has worked with WWE and has done really everything he could do with them.
He is a multi-time World Champion, a Royal Rumble and Money in the Bank winner, and he has wrestled at WrestleMania. He was Edge’s last opponent as well.
There is nothing Del Rio can look back on and say he was not able to do with WWE; they basically treated him as well as any talent could be treated. That is why it is weird they would fire him over something like this when clearly he would not have hurt a person if not for a racist comment. Del Rio was furious that they fired him over this, as he clearly was, in a sense, defending his nationality.
Most feel that WWE would not have fired Del Rio if he was not already vocal about not re-signing when his deal was up. WWE has offered him new deals, but he never wanted to sign. Many times, WWE will release talent early who plan to not re-sign. WWE is in a budget cutting mode right now, so anyone they find to not be helpful to their future will be let go. That pretty much means that WWE would have kept Del Rio had he already signed a new deal, but because he didn’t, they had a valid excuse to cut him early.
TNA jumping in when someone is let go is not surprising. They do this often. This time, however, it is doubtful they will be able to bring in the man they want. Even if they offered Del Rio the wives of all wrestlers present, it is doubtful he’d sign with them. He wants to be in Mexico, not TNA. However, I’d expect TNA to keep trying to bring in the guy. TNA might be going out of business soon, so a lot of wrestlers are kind of staying away from the company as much as possible. So I do not expect any major name to end up there any time soon.
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