More Details on Why WWE Released Big Cass

As mentioned, Big Cass was released by WWE on Tuesday. Vince McMahon reportedly had a private meeting with him before SmackDown and informed him of the release.

A few possible reasons for his release were reported today in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter by Dave Meltzer. According to Meltzer, one of the big reasons was in fact the “little person incident” on the May 1 SmackDown that reportedly got a lot of backstage WWE officials upset. The story was that Cass was meant to bring out a little person dressed like Daniel Bryan and would give him a big boot. Cass pitched an idea that he would give him a more brutal beatdown after the boot, but was shot down. Cass then went directly to Vince McMahon to make his pitch but Vince also shot him down, telling him to stick with the original script since the extra beatdown could be seen as tasteless. Cass ended up ignoring them and still went ahead with the extra beatdown after the big boot, which ended up getting a lot of backstage heat on him.

However, this wasn’t the only reason for his release. Dave Meltzer says that he heard that WWE was going to punish Cass further for the incident, but an actual release just for that was not originally planned. Having him tap out to Daniel Bryan in two matches in a row was going to be his likely punishment, Meltzer speculated.

There was also another incident where Cass blew off a rehearsal for a promo that WWE producer Kevin Dunn asked for, and on the live version, Cass apparently went too long. Meltzer says that Vince McMahon reportedly hated the promo (which promo wasn’t specified) and even fired the promo writer a few weeks ago.

Another incident, as mentioned previously, was on a bus on WWE’s recent European tour where Cass got locked in the bus bathroom because of a broken lock and ended up breaking down the door because he thought he was being pranked.

There were also reportedly negative feelings about him before his knee injury last year, stemming from his feud against the Big Show. WWE officials apparently felt that the feud did not go well and much of the blame was put on Cass. Meltzer says that there was also some negativity towards his work during his feud with Bryan, but that was not a reason for him to be fired in the way that he was.

Cass also reportedly “had enemies,” Meltzer says, stemming from an argument he had with Sami Zayn where he strongly defended Donald Trump’s treatment of Muslims, which “ruffled many people’s feathers.” However, being that the McMahons are major donors to Donald Trump and Linda McMahon has a job in Trump’s cabinet, that was definitely not the reason that McMahon fired him.