WWE Views Corey Graves’ Twitter Rant as Potential Attempt to Get Fired

Corey Graves has been a major voice in WWE, serving as a commentator for many years but things haven’t been going well for him lately after he publicly expressed frustration over being moved to NXT commentary in now-deleted tweets. With that said, WWE’s backstage reaction to his social media outburst has been revealed.

While speaking on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer explained that back in September or early October, WWE had initially planned for Michael Cole and Pat McAfee to be the Raw commentary team, while Corey Graves and Joe Tessitore were expected to take over SmackDown. However, a couple of weeks ago, Graves learned that Wade Barrett would be replacing him on SmackDown, leaving him frustrated.

“I’m gonna say this is September-ish, maybe early October. I just remember when they first made the announcement of the announcing changes and that Pat McAfee would be back and everything.

So, basically, when Michael Cole had moved to SmackDown, but it was only gonna be temporary, and Joe Tessitore was starting with Raw, and we were told it’s only temporary, he’s gonna be moved to SmackDown. At the time I was told that the Raw announce team would be, in January, Michael Cole and Pat McAfee, and the SmackDown team would be Corey Graves and Joe Tessitore.

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So, then, I’m gonna say maybe a couple of weeks ago, not that long ago, I just kinda asked, ‘So is it Joe Tessitore and Corey Graves that are gonna be the hosts of SmackDown?’, since that’s what I had already been told. And the answer was, ‘To be determined. It’s not determined’.

Now I guess it was a couple of weeks ago when Corey Graves got the word that Wade Barrett was gonna replace him on that show, and he wasn’t happy. I don’t know if he got the word he was gonna start in January in NXT, I don’t know the situation there. I just know that that’s when he found out that he wasn’t gonna be on SmackDown as he presumed he would be. So he was genuinely unhappy.”

Meltzer noted that while Graves’ reaction on Twitter remains unclear, some within WWE believe it was a deliberate attempt to get released. However, WWE may be hesitant to fire him, as they wouldn’t want him joining AEW. Instead, the company could opt to suspend him, though that hasn’t been confirmed.

“Now why you would go on Twitter and do all this, I can’t answer that question. There’s people there who think that he was trying to get fired and that’s why he did it. If he was trying to get fired, they probably aren’t gonna fire him, because I don’t think they want him going to AEW if they give him a release. They could also suspend him, which maybe they’ve done for all we know. It doesn’t have to be announced that they’ve suspended him.”

After missing the January 14 episode of WWE NXT, Corey Graves was also notably absent from the January 15 episode of WWE Speed, where he had been providing commentary since the very beginning. Therefore, we will have to wait and see what will become of Corey Graves in the end, as his future in WWE does seem uncertain at the moment.