Maria Kanellis Reveals If WWE Knew She Was Planning 2nd Child When Signing New Contract

Mike and Maria Kanellis signed new WWE contracts worth $250,000 a year each. They didn’t get very far into those five-year deals before Maria Kanellis needed to leave television because she was pregnant.

Mike Kanellis requested his WWE release soon after that, but the company didn’t let him go. Instead, they kept both Mike and Maria off television. They had nothing for Mike Bennett, but Maria Kanellis had a baby #2 to prepare for. The two were released along with many more on April 15th.

While speaking to Fightful, Maria Kanellis claimed that WWE was well aware of her intentions of growing her family. This was made clear because the inked new deals. We previously reported that WWE considered Maria Kanellis for creative role as well.

 “It was absolutely talked about. Every contract negotiation we went in there, because we actually at one point were talking about Maria just back in a creative role, not even coming back as a wrestler or a manager or any kind of on-screen talent. Maybe coming back and doing stuff with the girls down in NXT or helping be on the writing team. Because that’s what she loves to do now. She just loves helping, using her mind to help other people succeed. When we started talking to them, we said, ‘Look, we’re getting to that point where I’m 34, Maria’s 38, we want to have our kids when we want to have our kids.’ When we talked to them they were great. They were like, ‘Yeah, that’s not a problem at all.’ We told them. They 100% knew and they still offered us those contracts.”

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“I think it’s mostly fans that think that’s why they were mad at us. There was no heat backstage. No one yelling at us. No one screaming at us. It wasn’t like ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe you did this.’ It was business as usual. Now, if they said stuff behind our backs, they did. But, I don’t have a clue. That’s one of the reasons we signed, too. We were like, ‘Oh, you’re cool with us…?’ They [said], ‘Of course.’ They’re a family company. They took good care of us while we were there. They just did nothing with us creatively and that sucked.”

Maria Kanellis put it quite bluntly when she wrapped everything up by saying that WWE had nothing for them creatively. It did suck for them, and now they’re free from those contracts. Let’s just see what the two decide their next steps will be.

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