Two days ago ACH declared that he was quitting WWE in a strongly worded social media video. Unfortunately, quitting WWE isn’t quite that simple, and WWE hasn’t responded at all, and certainly not by releasing ACH from his contract, which they seem unlikely to do. This has been an ongoing saga since ACH, known in NXT as Jordan Myles, initially spoke out about a racist T-shirt design that WWE had at one point earmarked for him. WWE issued a statement on the matter, and things continued to escalate from there.
Now it seems that ACH is considering himself a free agent, whether WWE agrees or not. This morning he tweeted a list of potential opponents at other promotions, including ROH’s Jonathan Gresham, MLW’s Myron Reed, and Impact’s Dezmond Xavier.
https://twitter.com/ACHisSuper/status/1195318718454272000
If WWE still considers ACH to be under contract (which at this point they likely do), it may be hard to book any of those matches. On the other hand, WWE’s contracts categorize their performers as “independent contractors” undeserving of medical insurance, paid time off and other benefits, while still greatly restricting what they can do outside the company. So if ACH is in a position to challenge the contract, that might end up working (but watch out for WWE’s legal team).
For what it’s worth, the Wrestling Observer is reporting that WWE tried to help ACH resolve his issues about the company before he started tweeting about it. We don’t really know what those attempts to help looked like, but they clearly were insufficient for the situation. WWE can take comfort, one supposes, in the fact that the public conversation has now turned entirely toward what’s going on with ACH, rather than toward WWE’s long history of racism, which was the conversation that the T-shirt issue initially raised.
