10 Wrestlers Who Had To Deal With Major Pay Cuts

2. Jim Ross

The WWF were having a lot of financial issues in 1997, with their competition WCW being at their peak in popularity and success. There were reported talks of water coolers being repossessed at Titan Towers. Financial woes worsened to the point where Vince McMahon famously couldn’t honour Bret Hart’s massive contract, which would ultimately be the catalyst for the Montreal Screwjob and Bret leaving for WCW. Even their biggest show of the year WrestleMania 13 drew a low 237,000 buy rate and didn’t sell out the Chicago arena the Rosemont Horizon.

As a result of the money difficulties, many of the talent around this period had to take major pay cuts, which is the reason why J.J. Dillon quit abruptly. The WWF’s long time announcer Jim Ross was subjected to the pay cuts too and went into detail regarding it on his Grilling JR podcast:

“The seepage of information on these layoffs was not a major secret internally. Many of us, I took a big cut in pay. I took a, I think it was a $30,000 a year cut in pay right around 1997, maybe right before that. But somewhere in that mid-’90s, I didn’t try to commit that date to memory because it wasn’t something I wanted to recall all the time. But Vince came in and said, ‘We’re having issues, cash-flow wise, and I’m asking the wrestling people to take massive cuts in pay.’ And I said, ‘Okay, what are you offering or what are you suggesting.’ And he told me, and so I think I got cut $30,000 I believe.”

Thankfully the WWF would get red-hot the following year with Steve Austin and Mike Tyson and the Attitude Era, where the company made millions in profit and was able to pay its talent what they deserved.