There have been a few contracts that have already expired or will expire this year for some WWE NXT stars.
Fightful Select reports several of the top NXT talents were offered deals to re-sign in the Fall of 2019. However, they decided to turn them down due to the amount being offered as it was “nowhere near” what the Raw and SmackDown talent were being offered at the time.
Thus, there was not much incentive for wrestlers to re-sign for the rates being offered for a long-term deal. This would explain why so many deals were up this year.
Johnny Gargano, whose deal expires in December, is one of the NXT talents that was offered a new contract in the Fall of 2019 around the time when NXT moved to the USA Network in order to go head-to-head with AEW Dynamite.
At the time, WWE was trying to re-sign any and all wrestlers that they could in order to prevent them from going to the rival promotion.
Adam Cole, whose deal expired in July, but signed a contract extension to get through August to finish up his storyline with Kyle O’Reilly only to leave to join AEW, was another person who passed on what was offered to him in 2019. There are other names that weren’t being used on TV but still passed on new contract offers.
In the cases of Cole and Gargano, if they did sign new deals in 2019 then they would be under contract at least until 2022 or longer. Pete Dunne recently signed a new deal with WWE.
