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What's the story?
During his most recent Voices of Wrestling podcast, Joe Lanza speculatively revealed that the WWE had made a change to the WWE 2K18 video game royalties for any 205 LIVE stars that made it in which could have contributed to Neville's request for a release from the WWE.
In case you didn't know...
We already know that there was an issue over the royalties for the Wrestlemania DVD and 205 LIVE stars after the Cruiserweight title match between Austin Aries and Neville was bumped to the pre-show and then omitted from the DVD, meaning neither superstar would receive the increased revenue in royalties.
This eventually led to Austin Aries quitting the WWE and the same is now being cited as a contributing factor for Neville not being at Raw and asking for his release from the WWE.
The heart of the matter
Joe Lanza was discussing the Neville situation and highlighting how 205 LIVE doesn't seem to be taken seriously by the WWE, in his opinion. He pointed out that 205 LIVE stars have to attend both Raw and SmackDown tapings, have to record their matches late and he touched on another thing that could make 205 LIVE stars like Neville unhappy with the company.
"The 205 Live talent that made their way onto the video game are not getting piece of sales, but are getting a flat fee"
For clarification, all Raw or SmackDown superstars who are getting a proportion of the video game sales in royalties have a considerable amount in their name. As the game is likely to sell well it's almost a given that will be a sizable amount of money. However, the 205 LIVE stars have reportedly only received a flat fee which means that they potentially miss out on a bigger income from the game.
It's also worth pointing out that these claims are uncorroborated at this point so could be false, although Lanza and VOW have a fairly decent track record when it comes to these thin
What's next?
We're still waiting for an official statement from the WWE, or a public statement from Neville and until that happens rampant speculation, such as this article, will probably continue. One thing is for sure though, it certainly looks like Neville has a handful of reasons to justify his actions
Author's take
The sad thing is that I was still holding out hope that the WWE dirt sheets had gotten this one wrong and Neville would be back on TV soon, or if they'd gotten it right that the WWE and Neville would come to an agreement and put this all behind them. But with every new report that started doing rounds in the media, it looks more and more likely that we've seen Neville wrestle in a WWE ring for the last time (at least for the near future).
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