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UPDATE 2:15 PM: Justin Barrasso of Sports Illustrated reported today that WWE confirmed to SI that Vega was terminated "for breaching her contract."
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE - 1:32 PM EST
After WWE star Zelina Vega was released this past Friday in the wake of WWE's third-party edict banning talents from maintaining relationships that can earn talents outside income as WWE has set up their own in-house Talent Brand Management office to oversee those relationships directly, Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) President Gabrielle Carteris stated that the union, which oversees a number of Hollywood professionals, is seeking to assist professional wrestlers.
In a statement to Spectrum Sports 360 report Jon Alba of Florida, Carteris said:
"Wrestling is as much about media as it is sports and we are going to directly engage with members of this profession to help find ways for them to protect themselves. As more people reinvest in unions and as more working people are harassed by employers who don't want to protect them, SAG-AFTRA is committed to doing what we can to help professional wrestlers secure the protections they deserve."
While SAG-AFTRA covers professional actors, voiceover artists and television and radio personalities, professional wrestlers have always fallen between the cracks as they are not comfortably categorized as actors or stunt performers and while professional wrestling series are among the top-rated programming on cable television, those productions are non-union and would not be subject to SAG-AFTRA oversight. If should be interesting to see if SAG-AFTRA amend their requirements to allow professional wrestlers into the fold and if so, what the ripple effect might be not just for WWE for other promotions.
Vega was released this past Friday. Multiple WWE sources indicate that Vega was among those who openly spoke up to WWE management about the loss of income due to the third-party edict as she was one of the top ranked Twitch personalities and it is believed she was making money at or above the level of her WWE contract. We are told that Vega had been seeking to meet with Vince McMahon over the issue but have no confirmation that meeting took place. We are told Vega was not part of the group that met with McMahon personally on 10/29 in Stamford, CT.
The irony of the Vega release is that she was released despite doing what the company asked, as she and husband WWE star Aleister Black officially announced they were suspending their Twitch broadcasts on 10/30. While Vega did maintain an Onlyfans account, it was never presented under any of her WWE persona/WWE intellectual property and featured Vega, listed as Megan Minx, in cosplay outfits. The Onlyfans account was never even promoted across Vega's other social media channels. It's entirely possible that the usage of the account was the "last straw", but given that it didn't utilize any of WWE's intellectual property and that Onlyfans was not on the list of third-parties WWE wanted talents to stop engaging with, it is, at best, a gray area. At worst, it could have been an actionable offense.
On the surface, it certainly would not appear that WWE could use the "creative has nothing for you" reasoning that is sometimes used when a talent is cut, since Vega had just received the biggest singles push of her WWE run in matches against Raw Women's Champion Asuka and her switch over to Smackdown would conceivably leave Vega with a blank slate of new potential opponents, including Bayley, Sasha Banks and former Raw foe Bianca Belair to work with.
Vega returned to Twitch streaming on Friday, just hours after her WWE release, at one point appearing to be in tears from the support live on the channel, which had over 5,000 fans at one point taking part in the stream at the same time.
"If I go down as someone who stood up for themselves, then so be it, " said Vega during the stream on Friday. "I'm so thankful. I'm not angry. I'm just heartbroken because doing this, being a wrestler, is all I ever wanted to do."
WWE's third-party edict has caught the attention of former United States Presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who has made it clear would using his influence to push President-Elect Joe Biden's Secretary of Labor (who has yet to be named) to look into professional wrestlers being categorized as independent contractors instead of employees after Biden is sworn in next year.
The irony of SAG-AFTRA being interested in Vega's release is especially interesting as Vega was hired (after years of WWE being aware of her but not pulling the trigger) in the wake of being cast in WWE Studios' Fighting with My Family, where The Rock personally picked Vega to portray AJ Lee. Vega, under her former ring name Thea Trinidad, also had acting roles in the horror films Army of the Damned and Self Storage in 2013.
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