Former WWE wrestlers react to Mark Carrano’s firing

By tweeting a picture yesterday (April 22), Mickie James outed WWE’s practice of sending released wrestlers’ belongings to them in a garbage bag. That set off a chain reaction of events at the biggest pro wrestling promotion sports entertainment corporation the world’s ever known, culminating in the reported firing of long-time talent relations executive Mark Carrano.

Since lots of people have worked for, and been let go by, Vince McMahon’s company over the years, it stands to reason others could relate to James’s experience. Some, like CM Punk and Maria Kanellis, already reacted to Mickie’s trash bag pic and Triple H & Stephanie McMahon’s public apologies. Others specifically had thoughts about Carrano.

Gail Kim, who’s been a vocal critic of WWE on a number of fronts over the years, including what the former Divas champion believes are their racist and sexist practices. Kim is among those who think Carrano was scapegoated for this flap, but she has other issues with the man, tweeting:

“I know the WWE trolls are going to come for me, but Mark was not a good human being. I don’t think he should necessarily get blamed for this incident but I hope this karma makes him realize and wake up. Be a nice human and maybe things will change for you @TheHeaterMC”

Like Kanellis, Jillian Hall confirmed the practice that got Carrano fired has been going on for a while...

And Fred Rosser, who WWE fans knew as Darren Young, seems to have had particularly troubling dealings with Carrano. He tweeted:

“I was constantly harassed by him about losing my job and I just stayed quite [sic].”

WWE seems to have stopped the PR bleed, at least for the moment. And it doesn’t seem like many are going to be sad to see Carrano go, even if he was someone who the clock was ticking for anyway after John Laurinaitis was brought back to the company.

But all evidence says the issues go deeper than one man, or the handful of people said to have been fired as part of a recent housecleaning.

We’ll see if changes continue once trashbag-gate dies down.