Andrade signed with WWE in 2015 and was pushed as a top star in NXT as Andrade "Cien" Almas. As was so often the case when Vince McMahon was in charge, that didn't translate to the main roster when he started competing on RAW and SmackDown in 2018.
He did hold the United States Championship for a time, but left the company in 2021 and later joined AEW as Andrade El Idolo. His time there wasn't handled particularly well, so his return to WWE at the 2024 Royal Rumble was met with quite a bit of excitement from professional wrestling fans.
Unfortunately, he largely hovered around the midcard, and the news broke yesterday that he'd been released by WWE again. Dave Meltzer has since weighed in, claiming that this came as a result of a "disciplinary thing" following an incident at a recent TV taping.
"I don’t know the whole story, but I do know it was a discipline thing. It was not his doing at all," he shared. "You know, it wasn’t like, 'Oh, he’s not being used well, so he’s unhappy.' I’m positive he’s unhappy, but it wasn’t him asking out."
"What happened was a couple of weeks ago, it is actually a story from a couple of weeks ago that just broke today. I mean, he wasn’t fired until today, but a couple of weeks ago, there was a disciplinary thing, and all I know is it was at a TV shoot, and he was told to go home, and he’s not been used since."
"And when he was sent home, you don’t hear guys being sent home that often anymore, like you did back in the day," Meltzer continued. "The feeling when he got sent home was that it must be serious because you don’t hear about that. I was told it was not drug-related, it was not alcohol-related, it was not marriage-related. Nobody would tell me what it was, but it was enough to be sent home."
It's also been reported that WWE intended for Andrade and Rey Fenix to win the Tag Team Championships from The Wyatt Sicks at Clash in Paris, so abandoning that plan (and essentially firing the former Speed Champion) must mean this was a serious incident.
We'll no doubt learn more in the coming days, and Andrade is bound to break his silence eventually. For now, stay tuned for updates as we have them.