Two former WWE Superstars have elaborated on how the pay structure works in the modern era.
Much like the wider entertainment world, the professional wrestling landscape has vastly changed in the past decade. With physical media sales dropping in favour of streaming and major events included with the price of subscriptions, this has also been reflected in how the stars of the show are paid in regards to being on big shows and royalty payments.
While appearing on Maven’s YouTube channel, former WWE stars Mace and Mansoor discussed how various aspects of the company are different today than they were back when Maven was competing in the early 2000s.
When the topic of pay came up, Maven stated that he was on pay sheets, meaning that he would receive a percentage of ticket sales for every show and his pay differed week to week. Mansoor responded that they do get a cheque in the mail each week but it is the same number regardless of how many times they wrestled that week.
Mace added that they had to pay for everything apart from flights and sometimes it would be more beneficial to not wrestle as they received more due to lack of expenses. When the topic of downside guarantee came up, which is the base salary a Superstar is set to receive, Mace and Mansoor described the bucket system:
Mace: “It’s a little bit different now because what they have now is it’s called the bucket system… So we do still have a downside and everything you do, actually, you get paid technically, and it goes into this bucket. But as long as your bucket doesn’t overflow, you just get your downside.”
Mansoor: “It’s very complicated, but this is basically what it means. Every time you work a show, you get an invisible payment that doesn’t actually go into your bank account, it goes into into a metaphorical bucket. The top of the bucket is your downside.
If your downside is $125,000 and let’s say every time you work a show, they make an invisible payment of $1,000. Now you don’t see that $1,000 until you make $125,000 worth of bookings on top of your downside. So anything above $125,000 that you make is extra as a bonus for you. So let’s say you sell a tonne of t-shirts…”
Maven: “So, merch [sales] also goes into the bucket?”
Mansoor: “So we didn’t see any extra money from merchandise it all went into our bucket”
Maven: “Wait a minute, you guys don’t get royalties?”
Mace: “Not unless you sell so much that it outperforms your downside.”
Maven: “PPV checks, do you get PPV checks? We used to, I couldn’t wait to get a PPV check.”
Mace: “You get paid the exact same amount whether you are on a PPV or not.”
Mansoor: “Unless, they decide to pay you more than your downside for a PPV. So let’s say my downside is $125,000 and I worked a Saudi show which is “CA-CHING CA-CHING!” and they decide to pay you $150,000 well then you are going to make $25,000 bonus because that’s on top of your downside.”
Maven: “But hold on, that’s an arbitrary number, who’s to say how much each show is worth?”
Mace: “The wizard on the mountain that decides who gets paid what… and get this if you were working a lot of house shows, if you were on TV every week, if you were on every pay per view and if you were selling a lot of T shirts, something that happened pretty frequently is all of a sudden you stopped going on house shows.”
Mansoor: “Right as you approach your downside in your bucket…just as you are about to make a little extra money… we got nothing for you creatively.”
WWE Touts Big Success From Recent Event
April 6th and 7th saw WWE present WrestleMania 40, which emanated from Philadelphia and was expected to be one of the biggest shows in the history of the company before the event went live around the world. Smashing all records in a matter of hours, WWE publicly touted the success of WrestleMania 40, stating that it was the most successful event in history. The main event of the show saw Cody Rhodes finally finish the story with a victory over Roman Reigns.
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