Drew McIntyre and Wade Barrett's work visas expire, both are "sidelined indefinitely"
by David Bixenspan on Jun 29, 2010 11:26 AM EDT
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Big news coming out of last night's (free) episode of Wrestling Observer Radio at F4WOnline.com: The work visas of both Drew McIntyre (written out using the real reason as the storyline reason) and Wade Barrett (said to be meeting with WWE higher ups to discuss why Nexus attacked Vince McMahon) have expired, and it's not clear why, as WWE is usually very careful with these matters. McIntyre presumably has United States Permanent Resident Card (commonly known as a green card) application pending since he recently married an American (fellow WWE performer Tiffany), but who knows how long that will take?
Jason Powell at ProWrestling.net has more details:
Both wrestlers are sidelined indefinitely.
"(This) is a bad oversight that you can't blame legal for as they can do only so much once they're told a visa is set to expire," says one former WWE employee. "It is a key responsibility of Talent Relations to keep tabs on all contracts and particulars pertaining to talent being in good legal standing in any which way."
Meanwhile, a second source stated the opinion that it's not a major problem in that Barrett and McIntyre simply had to return home to fill out the necessary paperwork. This source noted that someone from the legal department works with talent relations on these issues.
Generally speaking, when WWE wrestlers had visa issues in the past, like with Steve "D.J. Gabriel" Lewington, they were in developmental and fired until they got new visas. McIntyre, Barrett, and WWE Champion Sheamus were signed at the same time, so it's a little curious that Sheamus is still around and on top. Was WWE more on top of his status? Does he have a green card?
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Update from Bryan Alvarez
— As talked about yesterday on the new edition of Wrestling Observer Radio (which is a FREE download today off the right-hand side of the front page), both Drew McIntyre and Wade Barrett are having visa issues. Based on the way they shot the angles on TV, it appears at the time they had no idea when Drew’s problems would be cleared up and they hoped Barrett would be back by next week’s Raw. Unfortunately, as of this afternoon the word we’ve gotten is that creative has been told to presume both won’t be back until after SummerSlam, which is a complete disaster particularly in the case of Barrett as the standout performer in Nexus. Granted, they could be back sooner, but either way heads are going to roll. It also sucks for McIntyre because he was scheduled to win the briefcase at WrestleMania and then that got changed, and he was scheduled to win it again at Money in the Bank and now he may not be able to work that show either. One of our readers said they saw McIntyre in Scotland on Saturday night, so apparently he’s back home.
— We don’t have an update on Sheamus, who was signed around the same time as Barrett and McIntyre, but the feeling from one WWE source is that either WWE somehow caught it and handled it while somehow missing the other two, or he was proactive in bringing it to their attention and they handled it without thinking about the other two. Or I guess presumably he could be next. We’ll update later today or tomorrow when we hear more.
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