10 Most Controversial WWE Firings Ever
4. Alberto Del Rio
Alberto Del Rio is a divisive figure in the professional wrestling world. A precociously talented performer of legendary stock, Del Rio also had a knack for rubbing people up the wrong way, for being a spiky character backstage and for bouts of bullying behaviour. This reached a terrible apex in May 2020, when Del Rio was arrested after allegedly sexually assaulting a woman and threatening to abandon her child in the middle of a road.
Del Rio's first WWE run came to an end in 2014 in controversial circumstances. The official position was that Del Rio was released due to 'unprofessional conduct and an altercation with an employee'', but there was a whole lot more to it than that. The 'unprofessional conduct' in question was a slap and the 'employee' was a racist.
The incident happened backstage, after WWE's Manager of Social Media Live Events (an actual job, believe it or not) made a racist joke about Mexicans, directed specifically at Alberto Del Rio. El Patron wasn't around to hear the joke but word soon got around, and the nine-time world champion confronted the racist goon. No apology was forthcoming, only a mindless grin, so Del Rio took matters into his own hands and slapped the idiot. Needless to say, he was soon released.
On the one hand, slapping a colleague isn't the most measured way to deal with a backstage dispute. On the other, racism is completely intolerable. Del Rio was back with WWE a couple of years later.