Maria Kanellis Blasts WWE Over Not Paying Her Enough & Refusing to Get Her A Raise for Over 5 Years

Maria Kanellis and Mike Bennett were released by WWE in April 2020 as part of the COVID-19 budget cuts. Both of them eventually returned to ROH. Maria Kanellis was also grateful to WWE for providing them with an opportunity to work for the company.

While speaking on the Wrassingh Show, Maria Kanellis talked about her initial run in WWE that lasted from 2005 to 2010.

Maria Kanellis was released on February of 2010 and right after that, she released a musical EP called Seven Sins.

Maria Kanellis didn’t like how WWE tried to take control of her project and believes WWE still does such practices with its third party sites ban. She added that WWE refused to give her a raise when she asked for one despite working for several years.

“WWE has been, they’ve always been that way about your personal projects. And now it’s really starting to come to light with Twitch, with Cameo and all of that kind of stuff. But even back then when it came to my music or me trying to go and do acting things or even going on auditions, WWE wanted to have control over that. And I just, I wasn’t interested in that, especially with how much they wanted to pay me!”

“I hadn’t had a raise in five and a half years, so I asked for a raise and then they didn’t want to give me one! So like, it was just weird that I was working just as much as the top guys were, but I wasn’t even paid one tenth what they were. For me it just wasn’t reasonable, like you shouldn’t stay in a relationship that is so one-sided and that’s how it felt for me was just them taking from me while I wasn’t getting enough in return. I mean, it just wasn’t a favorable time in my life financially or just like personally.”

Maria Kanellis is content working in ROH right now but she’ll always be grateful for her time in WWE. However, it is unlikely she’ll return to the company anytime soon.