Ironically, the decision I made to fire Syxx—Sean Waltman—in early 1998 inadvertently helped the angle. Quite frankly, firing Sean was one of the biggest favors I did for WWE at the time.
Sean Waltman, Kevin Nash, and Scott Hall were like the Three Amigos, thick as thieves and inseparable on-screen and off. They stuck together and watched each others’ backs. Sean was able to take advantage of his friendship with Kevin and Scott. In many ways, Sean was lucky to even have a job.
Don’t get me wrong. Sean had talent, and was a great performer when he was sober. The problem was, those periods were few and far between. But even then, he wasn’t very articulate and didn’t have the ability to do a promo that well. His role in nWo was perfect for him. He didn’t have to say all that much. He relied on his looks and his work rate, which at the time ranged from good to amazing, depending on what his chemical balance was.
In late 1997 or early 1998, we’d come to a verbal agreement with Sean on a new contract. We agreed on terms and sent the writ- ten contract to his manager, Barry Bloom. We also started paying him under the terms of that agreement.
A few months later, someone from my legal department told me Sean hadn’t signed the contract, and I called Barry and said, “Let’s get this thing signed and get it out of the way.”
And I was hit with, “Well, we want to talk about the terms of the deal.”
That pissed me off to the point where I fired Sean immediately To me, that was just a sleazy way to conduct business, and I’ve been exposed to a lot of sleaze.
There were reports at the time that he was released because he was injured, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t even fired because he was an average talent with an above-average paycheck. He was fired be- cause we had agreed to a deal and, rather than fulfilling his obligation, he tried to renegotiate. It wouldn’t have mattered to me if he had a broken neck, cancer, AIDS, typhoid, and the first domestic case of the bird flu virus—I still would have fired him. He wasn’t worth the pain in the ass he’d become.
