As noted before, Andrade El Idolo has been absent from AEW since earlier this month due to issues believed to be due to him being currently under a non-compete clause with WWE following his firing from the company this past September. This non-compete clause is currently believed to be for one year in length over WWE’s claims that he breached his contract over his firing. Besides AEW, Andrade had also been pulled from several of his scheduled indies bookings this month due to similar issues.
Lawyer and former WWE wrestler David Otunga recently released a new video on his official YouTube channel. One of the topics discussed included Otunga’s thoughts about the legailties of WWE’s non-compete clause in their talent contracts.
“There is a lot to be left to interpretation and there are vague clauses. The contract is a lot of contradictions. The whole independent contractors part, it just doesn’t seem legally enforceable to me.”
Otunga also gave his thoughts about the clause that allows WWE to fire a talent without cause and can hold a talent out for a full year from working in wrestling without paying them.
“Under this non-compete clause, technically, a talent could sign a contract, WWE could turn around the next day and fire them for no cause, and then say, ‘Hey, we’re not going to pay you for one year and you can’t wrestle anywhere else for one year.’ This is in the contract. This would be enforceable, presuming this contract is valid.”
Otunga also gave his thoughts about WWE paying talent for 90 days after their releases and firings is their way of trying to keep these contract disputes out of court and not wanting a judge to rule their non-compete clause as being legally invalid.
“This is WWE being smart because they’re trying to keep these disputes out of court. They don’t want talent to take them to court and challenge this because a judge would likely rule this invalid. The fact that you’re preventing somebody from working to support themselves in their given field for an entire year and you’re not compensating them, that right there, we can go back to contract 101, it has to be equal on both sides to where you’re giving up something in exchange for something else. In this situation, the talent would be giving up their right to earn a living in exchange for nothing because they wouldn’t be compensated by WWE. It’s different when WWE pays them because now they have a little more leverage for the contract to be seen as somewhat reasonable, but the argument can still be made. When WWE is not compensating the talent, I don’t know how they could enforce this.
If he were to take this to court, I think a judge is very likely to rule in his favor and just throw out the entire clause in the contract. You can’t prevent somebody from earning a living for an entire year.”
Otunga also gave his thoughts about him not knowing why WWE would want to enforce this year-long clause when it came to Andrade due to they haven’t done it in the past. Otunga also gave his thoughts that this was not being done to protect trade secrets or slow down Andrade’s momentum.
Otunga speculated that WWE could be doing this to somehow get a deal from AEW for Adam Copeland to return for John Cena’s final match of his wrestling career.
Transcript h/t: Fightful.com
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