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WWE announced that Zelina Vega has been released by the company.
The official announcement:
"WWE has come to terms on the release of Zelina Vega. We wish her all the best in her future endeavors."
The announcement came minutes after Vega, real name Thea Budgen, tweeted the following:
I support unionization.
— ???????????????????????? ???????????????? (@Zelina_VegaWWE) November 13, 2020
Vega signed with WWE in 2017 after being cast to play AJ Lee in the WWE Studios' film Fighting with My Family. She debuted in WWE NXT as Andrade's business advisor, a duo that worked tremendously well and led him to the WWE NXT title. She and Andrade were drafed to the Smackdown brand in April 2018. They shifted over to Raw last year with Angel Garza joining the duo. She was one of the strongest pushed personalities during the early WWE Performance Center empty arena era of Raw during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Vega's biggest singles push came just a few months ago, challenging Asuka for the Raw Women's Championship in a pair of entertaining bouts. She was split off from Garza and Andrade, then moved to Smackdown during the most recent Draft but hadn't really been used since shifting to the blue brand.
Based on the unionization comment, it would appear the major factor in Vega's release was WWE's third-party edict as she was in the top percentile of Twitch streamers. One would think that given she had built up a nice side business for herself, she wasn't going to be thrilled to let it be absorbed into her WWE deal for a fraction of the revenue. Vega was one of several who recently announced she was going to suspend her streaming until further notice. It would appear push came to shove and that led to WWE releasing her.
Update: WWE sources confirm Vega has a 90 day non-complete, so the earliest she could be seen elsewhere on national TV would be mid-February 2021.
The unionization comment was obviously in reference to the fact that WWE talents are technically independent contractors but were being ordered to hand over their Cameo, Twitch, etc. accounts in favor of the company working directly with those entities. As we noted several days ago, WWE is launching its own in-house Talent Management end to oversee such relationships.
Vega already announced she would be returning to Twitch on her Instagram account, writing, "See you on Twitch."
Vega also recently launched an OnlyFans.com account at www.onlyfans.com/meganminx. That account notes that the page features no nudity and appears to mostly showcase her cosplay outfits.
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