Reports of WWE talent cuts that began Friday night have continued into Saturday, and you possibly can add three more wrestlers to the list. In keeping with PWInsider, Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson have been released by WWE; the news was later confirmed by Fightful, who reported that Giovanni Vinci had been released as well. They join Isla Dawn, Blair Davenport, Sonya Deville, the Authors of Pain, Paul Ellering, and Cedric Alexander, who were also cut over the weekend — Fightful claims sources inside “WWE NXT” imagine the releases are related to an upcoming crop of most important roster call-ups from the developmental brand.
Notably, Anderson is out with an injury with a torn labrum and rotator cuff; he had surgery in November and used the word “indefinitely” in a December interview before setting a return expectation of “no less than six or seven more months.” Fightful gave his recovery time as “no less than 3-6 months minimum” and noted that Anderson is “in good spirits” despite the highly unusual practice of being released during injury rehab. Neither Gallows nor Vinci had wrestled up to now in 2025 — the truth is, each men’s most up-to-date match was against one another in an untelevised contest ahead of the December 13 episode of “WWE SmackDown.”
Anderson and Gallows returned to WWE in 2022 following Vince McMahon’s ouster from his position as head of creative and substitute by Paul “Triple H” Levesque; their first WWE run had come to an end in 2020 when WWE released them through the COVID-19 pandemic. They spent the vast majority of 2024 on the “NXT” roster. Vinci had been with WWE since 2017 after entering the corporate as Fabian Aicher via the 2016 Cruiserweight Classic tournament. He would go on to turn into a member of GUNTHER’s stable, Imperium, on “NXT UK,” winning the NXT Tag Team Championship with Marcel Barthel, now referred to as Ludwig Kaiser. When the remainder of Imperium was called as much as the most important roster in 2022, nonetheless, he remained in “NXT,” re-debuting with a brand new character under the name Giovanni Vinci. After Levesque took creative control of WWE, Vinci was reunited with Imperium (though he kept the brand new name) and was a part of the act until being kicked out in 2024. A brief-lived try and revive the unique Vinci gimmick resulted only in Vinci taking a number of quick losses, and Fightful’s sources “imagine he was pushed down the cardboard with them knowing he would not be brought back.”
