Cain Velasquez – the man who dethroned Brock Lesnar at UFC – is history after only one fight at WWE. The league dissolves the expensive deal.
The ongoing wave of layoffs at WWE has taken another prominent victim: after only one match, the wrestling league has dissolved the deal with former UFC star Cain Velasquez. This was reported by the Wrestling Observer.
Velasquez – the man who had once dethroned Brock Lesnar as the heavyweight champion in the Octagon – made a surprise debut last fall at the season premiere of the TV show Friday Night SmackDown, reviving his old rivalry with Lesnar.
The feud – which also involved Rey Mysterio and his son Dominic – culminated in a title match at the Crown Jewel show in Saudi Arabia (the show where Tyson Fury also entered the ring for WWE).
WWE beat AEW in the battle for Cain Velasquez
Lesnar clearly won the duel, Velasquez was then supposed to be prepared for a full-time career at the WWE Performance Center in Orlando.
Instead, this career now ends before it has really begun. According to the Observer, Velasquez had made an expensive deal with WWE that the league could no longer afford after the outbreak of the Corona pandemic. Obviously, the management also lacked confidence that the Velasquez project would pay off.
The 37-year-old Velasquez had made his wrestling debut for League AAA in his native Mexico in 2019, after which WWE had secured his services and outdistanced the equally interested rival AEW. It remains to be seen whether the rival league is again an option for Velasquez.