If you haven’t kept up with the news this week, Sheamus is on the verge of departing WWE after a Hall of Fame-worthy career that’s spanned nearly two decades.
The 48-year-old has accomplished just about everything there is for a performer to accomplish in WWE, save for capturing the Men’s Intercontinental Championship, and he’ll soon have the opportunity to continue his in-ring career elsewhere.
Much like with Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods, who both announced their mutual separation from WWE earlier this year, many fans were surprised to hear that Sheamus was unable to come to terms on a contract extension with the company. WWE Hall of Famer and NXT Commentator, Booker T, was not among them.
Speaking on the latest episode of the Hall of Fame Podcast, Booker said it was nothing personal with regard to Sheamus’ pending free agency, just business. He also questioned the concept of someone being a ‘WWE lifer’ under the TKO corporate umbrella.
“We’re in a different time now. It ain’t like it was back in the day,” Booker said. “When I hear the term ‘lifer,’ you know, [people saying] ‘I thought he was going to be a lifer. I thought he was good.’ What the hell does that really mean in a job? When you work at a job, what does that really mean? Does anybody expect any basketball player to stay on the same team forever? Any football player?”
It’s a cruel and unfortunate fact of the business, but to Booker’s point, there’s not much that WWE management can do in certain contract situations.
“When I hear people literally trying to make WWE the bad guy when somebody gets released, laid off, or fired, that just gets me, because that happens in any corporation. It really does.”
This is not an apples-to-apples comparison because the NFL and NBA have salary caps, but regardless, you have WWE ownership that has set a budget, and it’s the job of President Nick Khan and Chief Content Officer Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque to operate within said budget. Sometimes, that’s going to mean letting an accomplished performer like Sheamus walk in order to pay and feature younger talent.
“There’s a life expectancy in everything, okay?” Booker said. “Someone like Sheamus, a four-time world champion, all right, he’s put in his work. And the thing is, if Sheamus left WWE, he still can go and make money and still do this thing for however many more years he actually wants to do it, if he wants to do it.”
Sheamus is expected to garner heavy interest on the open market, but he’s yet to be linked to any one company. He has already been moved to the alumni section of WWE’s website, but it’s not clear when his contract is due to expire.
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