From late summer 2022 through the end of that year, a number of wrestlers who’d been released by WWE during the pandemic were brought back to the company. The rehiring wave occurred after Vince McMahon “retired” in July of that year as hush money payments he made to women over his years in charge of WWE were investigated by the Board of Directors and the Federal government.
Although there were rumors he never really left, McMahon officially returned to the WWE boardroom in January of the next year.
He seemed to have resumed control of pretty much everything after helping execute the sale of the company to Ari Emanuel and the formation of TKO, until Janel Grant’s lawsuit in January 2024 brought the most shocking allegations against McMahon in a career full of them. He resigned a second time shortly after, and remains out as the case works its way through the legal system.
With longtime tag partner Karl Anderson, Doc Gallows (known as Luke Gallows in WWE) was among the talents brought back after McMahon’s initial resignation. The duo had been released in April 2020, then re-signed with WWE in October of 2022 a few months before McMahon came back. Speaking to PWMania.com’s Lee Tarrier recently, Gallows said it quickly felt different:
“When we came back in October of ‘22 it felt great. It felt fresh. It felt new. And then, you know, a few short months later, we’re in New York, and we’re getting ready to leave the building, and a limousine pulls up, and we see a mustachioed man pop out, and it was Vince McMahon coming back for the first time. We happen to see him in the parking garage.
“And I don’t know what goes on behind closed doors there, but from that point on, everything certainly got weird, whether it was the Vince thing and then the eventual sale to TKO and however that timeline worked, but you know, you could feel again, the winds of change.”
Released again this February, Gallows doesn’t hold a grudge. Including his run in the aughts as Festus and a member of CM Punk’s Straight Edge Society, that was his third time being cut by WWE.
You can check out PWMania’s entire interview with Doc Gallows here.
