Felix Upton on April 23, 2023
WWE Superstars are independent contractors, and they can sometimes get a bump in pay depending on the event. WrestleMania is treasured by performers, because of that pay increase, and it seems that the length of the match doesn’t really matter either.
WrestleMania 39 is in the rearview mirror, but WrestleMania season always draws out older stories. Some legendary performers from WWE History have laced up their boots on the grandest stage of them all, and even if if was for 11 seconds, the experience was well worth it.
During a digital signing on the Captain’s Corner, Chavo Guerrero explained how an 11-second WrestleMania match was his biggest payday in WWE. That being said, having an 11-second match was not the plan at all.
“They were building that match (Chavo versus Kane at WrestleMania 24). What happens (is) when we get to WrestleMania, a lot of the contracts start coming through, so let’s say they’re trying to sign Snoop Dogg.”
“Well sometimes, that’s not gonna come through until the day before, the day of sometimes. So, times change all the time, they’re constantly changing. Even though they may have the card set two weeks before or a month before, the day that it gets to WrestleMania, things change a lot.”
“So me and Kane had a match on WrestleMania. We had a great run going on. We had really good chemistry in-ring. So, then, about a week before, they started to shuffle things around and we weren’t on WrestleMania. So me and Kane went to Vince McMahon and said, ‘Hey Vince.’ We had a meeting with him in his office and said, ‘If we’re not on WrestleMania then this championship doesn’t mean anything’ and Vince is like, ‘You’re right, you’re right. Okay, you guys are definitely on.’”
“So, the week before, we had like eight-minute matches. When we got to WrestleMania, Vince called us in. He goes, ‘Guys, I have to cut time. I’m cutting time all over the place. I even cut time from the main event and here shuffling times around.’ So he goes, ‘I can only give you guys two minutes.’ Well I’m like, ‘Two minutes? What are we gonna do in two minutes? No one remembers a two minute match at WrestleMania, nobody.’ So we’re like, ‘Well, what if we say we can do this in, you know, 10, 20 seconds’ and he was like, ‘What? What? That’s great. How can you do that?’”
“So we kind of like, collaboration between all three of us and figured it out and that’s how it happened so, Kane won the Invitational Battle Royal to face the ECW Champion so I didn’t know who I was gonna face until it was Kane and then, I did my whole entrance and I’m watching for Kane and I don’t see him anywhere. He pops up behind me, beats me in eight seconds, if it was that. I’m like, eight seconds, awesome, great. So, I had my gripes, saying he cheated. I was coming down the ramp and what other match, what other sport can someone just appear — I’m not saying not jump somebody but actually beat them for a title.”
“This shouldn’t even have gone through. He cheated 100 percent, he didn’t wanna face me straight up because he knew I was gonna beat him. Vince loved it, we end up doing it and to this day, that eight seconds, that was the most I ever got paid for one match. It’s true, totally true. By the second, it’s incredible but it’s for the whole match. It was the most I got paid for one match. It was a lot and thank you Jim Ross. But yeah, that was for that and if you break down the second, it was pretty lucrative (he laughed).”
WrestleMania paydays are usually a bit larger for Superstars than the rest of the year. After all, the show of shows does have a much larger viewerbase than WWE’s typical shows. It seems that Chavo Guerrero will never forget that 11 seconds in the ring.
Does WWE pay too much for WrestleMania matches? How much is too much for 11 seconds of work? Sound off in the comments!
April 23, 2023 12:01 pm
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