The WWE announced Friday that NXT stars Garrett Dylan (Jody Kristofferson, son of actor Kris Kristofferson), Travis Tyler, Mac Miles, Dani Jackson and Slate Randall have all been released from the company.
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Kristofferson was released from the WWE for the second time. He was brought back earlier this year and served some time as a Rose Bud for Adam Rose, but the company has once again parted ways with him.
Miles a.k.a. William McNamee, was signed by the WWE in the fall after an impressive tryout and is an athlete from Colorado. He debuted on the NXT roster in a tag team match alongside Steve Cutler on July 17 that saw them lose to The Ascension.
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Jackson is a product of Ohio Valley Wrestling and was signed a few months ago after trying out at the WWE Performance Center in Orlando last December. Jackson didn't make it very far as she never appeared on television or at any live events.
Randall, whose real name is Shaun Ricker, appeared on the TNT reality series The Hero hosted by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and was signed last year after being on the show. He debuted a musical gimmick at a recent NXT live event, but the WWE apparently had no long-term plans for him.
These moves are part of a series of budget cuts the WWE has made in the last few months. The company also parted ways with seven percent of its employees on Thursday following its earnings conference call.
WWE CEO and Chairman Vince McMahon has been making budget cuts due to the company losing money over the lack of WWE Network subscriptions, a lackluster television deal being reached with NBC Universal and the company's stock taking a hit. It has long been rumored that NXT would get trimmed down along with the cuts.
The WWE has been scaling back expenses in many different ways including catering, traveling and the use of its ring crew, but there have also been releases to go along with the budget cuts as the company looks to cut costs anyway possible.
Earlier this summer, the WWE released 10 Superstars, a referee, a Monday Night RAW writer and an announcer as part of scaling back their expenses. Earlier this week, the WWE released Ricardo Rodriguez before then releasing seven percent of its non-talent employees on Thursday.
The lack of success of the WWE Network has been a big contributor to the company cutting costs. It was revealed in April that only 667,000 people had subscribed to the network, a far cry from the projected one million break-even point for the company. It was revealed on the conference call Thursday that now there are 700,000 subscribers to the network.
The WWE has continued to make cuts, and the latest casualties of those cost slashes are from the NXT roster.
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