WWF/WCW veteran Marc Mero posted the following on X:
“I’ve been asked many times what wrestlers actually make in royalties from the WWE, so let me give you a real example.
I left the WWE years ago, and more than 20 years later, in 2019, I came across an old royalty statement. When you look at how much money many wrestlers help generate versus how little they’re actually paid, it’s honestly hard to believe.
On this statement, even after being out of wrestling for over two decades, I was still partly responsible for $39,590.81 in revenue.
My royalty payment for that?
$71.47.
That’s the reality for a lot of wrestlers. We helped build the brand, the characters, and the moments fans still watch today, yet the compensation rarely reflects the value that was created.”
Below are the two photos he shared:
Some fans criticized Mero for his comments. You can read the fan comments below:
“What did you help build? honestly have no idea who you are and I watched every episode during attitude era. your royalty sounds accurate to me based on your impact.”
“To be fair who even are you”
“You didn’t really build anything though. People only remember you because of Sable, my guy. Know what I remember? Going to a car show to meet Sable when I was just 16yrs old. Was my birthday. She let me kiss her cheek, gave me an autograph, was super nice to me. You? Who were next to her. You were a prick. Enjoy your well earned 71 dollars”
“No offense sir, but you deserve the $72 out of that money. I’m 40 and don’t remember seeing you once. Set up autograph signings if you’re so popular then. Muted.”
“To be fair, royalties from videos probably had to be split across a fairly large amount of talent.”
“Marc this isn’t just WWE but in movies, tv shows, music etc … The fans will never understand the business side of contracts or royalties and there is no need to trigger them to go against the WWE”
“How long are you in the content listed? 30 seconds?”
“Doesn’t this get split amongst other wrestlers as well? Hey it’s either $71 or nothing”
“To be fair, you were cameos in everything that was listed, never the main character”
“Your ‘partial responsibility’ payment was 0.18% which is the amount of time you were in all of those videos. You know exactly how these splits work. To get on here and insinuate that you were responsible for more of the revenue share in videos like The Rock’s special is being intellectually dishonest and you know it.”
