R-Truth & Others Reflect on His WWE Release & Surprise Return in June of 2025

As noted before, R-Truth made his surprise return to WWE at this past June’s Money in the Bank 2025 following him departing the company earlier that month after his contract was not renewed at the time.

One of the topics of the recently released second season of the WWE: Unreal docuseries on Netflix featured R-Truth’s contract situation in 2025 that resulted in his release and surprise return to WWE within the span of a few weeks.

Prior to R-Truth’s release from WWE, a clip was shown featuring WWE CCO Paul “Triple H” Levesque and WWE co-lead writer Brian “Road Dogg” James being shown in a creative meeting involving Levesque not being happy with R-Truth wanting to shave his head for his match against John Cena at the May 24, 2025 episode of WWE Saturday Night’s Main Event show. James responded stating “this is why I am scared to pitch anything. Everything is just horrible and the sh*ts” and he couldn’t wait for Cena to beat Truth so that they could all move past it.

In a follow-up clip, Levesque responded to James’ reaction to their creative discussion stating “Sometimes, his personal feelings can skew his creative feelings over what is right for business.”

During the episode, Truth gave his thoughts about his reaction when he found out that he was being released from WWE.

“I was taking my daughter to the dance that day, I got the call I was released, and I put the tweet out. It was gut wrenching. My phone was blowing up. ‘Holy shit I got like a thousand text messages.’ ‘What the hell?’ I wasn’t expecting all that.”

Rhea Ripley gave her thoughts about the sad reaction within WWE over Truth’s announcement on social media that he was released from the company.

“When we first heard that he wasn’t gonna be at work anymore, we were all like, confused. ‘This isn’t real,’ like, ‘what are you talking about?’ It was just like a wave of sadness took over everyone here in the WWE.”

Cody Rhodes also responded about his initial reaction to Truth’s departure announcement.

“There are things that’s, ‘No.’ That’s a no. Can’t touch him. So I don’t care if we’re paying him… I don’t care, we need R-Truth.”

Levesque also responded about Truth’s announcement and his issues with the wording of it over Truth claiming that he was fired from WWE.

“He immediately went out on social and said he was fired — which, he was never fired, contrary to prior belief. He was never not under contract with us.”

Levesque also gave his thoughts about the very negative reaction from fans both online and at WWE shows over WWE’s decision to release Truth.

“If there is a desire from the audience to see a performer, I would love to have the performer. It would be silly not to. Then, it becomes if we can get to a place where we can do business together. That’s the business side. No one ever wanted Ron to leave, we just wanted to get to an amicable place.”

Following Truth’s surprise return to WWE at this past June’s Money in the Bank 2025 event, James stated that he began crying after he realized Truth was under the disguise for the mystery person appearance and reveal on the show.

“I knew it was Ron Killings immediately because of his ankles. (laughs) I know that sounds funny, but like, I knew his ankles. I started crying right then.”

WWE Executive Director Bruce Prichard revealed that Truth’s new contract with WWE was not done until the day of WWE’s Money in the Bank event.

“Not a lot of people knew, the deal wasn’t even done until the day of Money In The Bank. It was ‘well we can do this at the end of the show,’ because it was like ‘hey, this is a nice punctuation at the end of the night.”

Transcript h/t: F4WOnline.com, Fightful.com 1, 2, 3, & 4