29-Year WWE Veteran Released

Recent WWE budget cuts affected all divisions with the company, and not even veteran employees were safe. Mark Yeaton, who has been with the WWE for decades, was given his walking papers this week due to the ongoing budget cuts. Yeaton as served as a timekeeper and bell ringer for the company, a job the WWE apparently viewed as expendable. Throughout his 29 years with the WWE, Yeaton had rang a WWE bell well over 100,000 times. While Yeaton was a timekeeper in his primary role, he's possibly best remembered for being the guy who tossed beers to "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, often with pinpoint precision. Stone Cold tweeted following Yeaton's release, saying "#Swigofbeer to my old beer thrower Mark Yeaton. Best damn beer thrower in the world and a great guy." In addition to Yeaton being cut, Ricardo Rodriguez and several NXT talents were released. The WWE also opted to discontinue it's long running WWE Magazine after nearly 30 years of publication. According to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer, the releases were an incredible help to the WWE Network. The digital service now needs only 500,000 subscribers to break even financially as opposed to the one million in which the WWE had previously anticipated.