After around a decade wrestling for WWE, Jack Swagger recently decided to leave the company to try his hand at mixed martial arts as part of Bellator. It's going to be a while before he makes his debut and while he's chosen his words carefully while talking about his former employer, Swagger has now revealed that WWE's pay structure is as frustrating as not being used on TV.
"It is very difficult to plan financially with the WWE because every week the salary was different. Every month the salary was different. It’s based on the house shows and the attendance, and any extra stuff that goes in there. It makes it difficult to be consistent with your budget because it fluctuates.
"It is a couple of thousand each month, but sometimes and a lot of times it is lower and that makes it tough. Once you make it up to a certain income level and you acquire and buy certain things and have a certain way of life, it is really tough on your family to go back below that income level because you have certain things set as far as private schools and things like that."
What Swagger is describing here is obviously how wrestlers who don't appear on WWE programming each week and rarely get matches on house shows get treated in terms of money, something which proves being employed by the company but never being used doesn't mean wrestlers get to sit at home and make easy money! Swagger also explained how WWE Network residuals work.
"We were always told that the Network was going to be the future of the WWE so anything you can do for that it would be in your best interest. I never really got an explanation as far as how you gotpaid from the Network or anything like that.
"At first it started off as them not knowing how they were going to make money off of it and they passed it on to us like that, which doesn’t make any sense how Vince [McMahon] doesn’t know how he is going to make money off of this huge investment he made. So I honestly saw a little bit of an increase from the Network pay per views as much as talking trash of not knowing how it worked."
That's very interesting and you have to hand it to Swagger for going elsewhere to make a living, especially as it's arguably out of his comfort zone (he could have easily made a decent enough living returning to pro wrestling on the independent scene). Are you excited to see him make his MMA debut in Bellator? As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments section.