Earlier this week, WWE commentator Corey Graves took to social media to vent his frustrations over "being told you’re not famous enough for your own job." That came shortly after he was removed from RAW in favour of the returning Pat McAfee.
Clearly unhappy about being sent back to NXT - Joe Tessitore and Wade Barrett have become an established duo on SmackDown, so there was unlikely to be a place for him on Friday night - Graves later claimed to have a lot to say on Wednesday night show.
However, he was nowhere to be seen and his X posts have since been deleted.
Talking to the latest Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer explained the situation and shared rumblings he's heard about Graves looking to get fired (despite previously claiming the whole thing was a work in a now-deleted post of his own).
"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."
"So, 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.:
"So, then, I'm gonna say 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. So 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."
On the one hand, it's not outside the realm of possibility that Graves has somehow been cleared and this is an angle meant to set up a surprise role in next month's Royal Rumble PLE. On the other, he may be legitimately upset that WWE doesn't currently have a place for him on the main roster.
That's got to sting given how much work Graves has put into getting where he is today, though he certainly wouldn't be the first veteran commentator to be pushed to one side by WWE.
Stay tuned for updates as we have them.