WWE Hall of Famer Jim Ross addressed the wave of recent WWE releases head-on during the May 7 episode of his Grilling JR podcast — and his take on the contract structure at the heart of the controversy is eye-opening.

JR explained, bluntly, that no WWE contract is truly guaranteed for its full term unless it's been explicitly negotiated that way. And in his experience, that rarely happens.

"When you sign a five-year deal, all of them have outs of some sort. If you don't, you're stupid, and WWE is not stupid."

That quote, delivered in Ross's characteristically unvarnished style, gets to the core of what many wrestlers and fans have misunderstood about the nature of WWE deals. Multi-year contracts — regardless of how they're described publicly — almost always carry provisions that allow the company to terminate early.

Ross also addressed talent conduct, advising wrestlers to stay sharp and professional to protect their position: "Talent like wrestlers should avoid loafing to protect their careers."

JR noted that the majority of recent releases involve what he called "low-money guys" — talent whose base pay makes the 90-day pay-upon-release provision relatively inexpensive for WWE to execute. It's a calculating, if cold, business reality: the less a talent earns, the cheaper it is to cut them loose.

That 90-day period — commonly referred to as the "90-day non-compete" — means released talent continues to receive pay for roughly three months post-release but cannot appear for a competing promotion during that window.

Ross's comments arrive amid significant turbulence in WWE's talent relations department. TKO Group Holdings has overseen more than 24 post-WrestleMania 42 releases, with reports also surfacing that at least six talents were asked to accept pay cuts of up to 50%.

Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods of The New Day were among the most notable departures, reportedly declining those reductions before being released. Roman Reigns, by contrast, was said to not have been approached about a pay cut.

For Ross — who spent decades as one of WWE's most prominent executives before transitioning to AEW — the current situation reflects a business being run with hard-nosed financial pragmatism. Whether that's the right approach for a company built on long-term talent relationships is a question he leaves for others to answer.

But on the legal and contractual mechanics? JR's message is clear: assume nothing is guaranteed unless it's written that way — explicitly.