Shawn Michaels Admits Dana Brooke’s WWE Release Was Surprising

Originally posted on Wrestlezone | By Matt Black | Last updated 9/28/23

Shawn Michaels was caught off guard by the WWE release of Dana Brooke last week.

WWE Hall of Famer Shawn Michaels recently participated in an NXT No Mercy media call. When asked if any of the recent WWE releases affected his plans in NXT aside from Mustafa Ali, Michaels pointed to Dana Brooke, who was also a consistent performer on the brand.

“Yeah, the main roster ones,” Shawn Michaels admitted. “Dana Brooke, obviously, is something that caught us by surprise a little bit because we had a nice story going on there. And I’ll say this, and I hope to God this doesn’t sound insensitive. It’s just that this is not the first time that we’ve gone through this.

“And it is something that — I’ll say this, my world now, I guess maybe I’ve grown a little bit that these things don’t throw me in the chaos where I don’t get too nervous, where I don’t get too upset. We try not to have the highs it takes too high and the lows to take us down too low. So yeah, we’ve made adjustments.

Shawn Michaels hopes main roster talents had a positive experience in NXT

“I’ll just say this: the talent that comes from the main roster to work here, I absolutely just enjoy the time with them. I really do. And I feel like we give them a love and a passion back for this line of work. I feel like they’re all better performers, whether they go back up to the main roster or they go somewhere else.

“I do know that their last experience with us is always a positive one. And that’s something that, again, I think is important to me anyway, that they have that experience here at NXT. But I think those would be the two because I think those are the two that we had maybe the deepest storylines with down here. And so those are always times you got to make adjustments creatively. And you know, we’ve done that in the case of Mustafa, and obviously, we’re going to do that in the case of Dana as well.”

This article first appeared on Wrestlezone and was syndicated with permission.

More must-reads: