Dakota Kai, Malcolm Bivens, Dexter Lumis, and more have been released today by WWE, giving fans another reason to get mad at them.

Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful Select reported the release of ten WWE superstars, all coming from the NXT brand. The list of released stars is as follows:

  1. Dakota Kai
  2. Malcolm Bivens
  3. Dexter Lumis
  4. Harland
  5. Paige Prinzivalli
  6. Vish Kanya
  7. Draco Anthony
  8. Raelyn Divine
  9. Sanjana George
  10. Mila Malani

These releases come as a shock to both fans and WWE wrestlers themselves, especially for the first four. Dakota Kai is a talented wrestler and she has shown her in-ring ability and character work during her time in NXT, definitely helping elevate the NXT Women's Division. Her most successful run in NXT had her winning the inaugural NXT Women's Tag Team Champions. Malcolm Bivens, meanwhile, was an integral part of the Diamond Mines stable, serving as the in-ring manager of Roderick Strong for a majority of the stable's time. Dexter Lumis was part of a well-received love angle with Indi Hartwell, but eventually lost steam when WWE disbanded The Way. Harland, finally, has been featured largely in NXT 2.0 with Joe Gacy, and has been even compared to Brock Lesnar at times.

As for the rest of the releases, a majority of them have not even seen any television time before they were released.

With regards to the reason for the wrestlers' release, it is said that Malcolm Bivens has refused to re-sign his contract with WWE back in February when his request to get more air time on TV was not satisfied. Meanwhile, Dexter Lumis, Harland, and Dakota Kai reportedly didn't impress the upper management well enough and WWE's Creative simply doesn't have anything in store for them. Kai herself said that she saw the release coming, and made it clear to WWE Management that she had no plans of renewing her contract.

For the rest, these releases were part of budget cuts by WWE. WWE has been notorious for making huge budget cuts around the months of April and May, right after WrestleMania. This year's cuts aren't as big as last year's though, which is a silver lining that I guess we can have for this awful news piece.