In response to allegations made by former WWE NXT talent Judas Devlin (Austin Matelson) against WWE NXT trainer Bill DeMott recently, WWE issued the following statement, “WWE took the accusations made two years ago by Austin Matelson very seriously, conducted a full investigation and was unable to validate the claims. Regardless, WWE continues to reinforce policies and procedures to ensure a positive training environment.”

For those wondering, Matelson made a radio appearance on the Vendetta Pro Radio show to discuss the allegations made against DeMott in a letter to WWE’s Talent Relations in March 2013. Matelson discussed a brutal, insulting series of events where DeMott allegedly physically assaulted talents, used racial and sexually insulting monikers and forced them into dangerous drills that led to a number of injuries. In an interesting note to this story, Matelson was released from his WWE deal after a severe spinal injury while training. Matelson alleged that DeMott kicked former NXT talent Briley Pierce (the younger brother of current WWE superstar Dolph Ziggler) in his medical boot, despite him being out of action with a broken leg. Pierce (Ryan Nemeth) took to his Twitter account regarding the matter once the story was made public and wrote the following, including a link to the letter, “This is sad but extremely true. Please share if you don’t want your heroes abused and mistreated.”

Matelson claimed that DeMott forced him to train and do dangerous wrestling moves without warming up properly, which led to a knee injured and described other allegations, which created a culture of fear and negativity, such as that talents were forced to perform dangerous drills, that DeMott would force talents to put their face near the bottom rope just so he could attempt to bust open their lips, that DeMott allegedly slapped one talent in a training room because the talent felt dizzy after a blow to the head inside the ring, that one talent was called a pedophile and another was targeted with homophobic slurs, that talents who were injured and not cleared for physical contact were subjected to physical assault and that when a talent referred to his finishing move as “The Davey Boy”, that DeMott allegedly responded by mocking the death of Davey Boy Smith.

The allegations against Bill DeMott are not the first time that he has been accused of wrong-doing while training talents as there were complaints by then developmental talents training in the defunct Deep South Wrestling years ago, leading to WWE ordering that all training sessions were to be taped, a move that is done today at the WWE Performance Center, as the building has cameras in almost every angle, so that activity at the building is taped and can even be broadcasted live to WWE headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut. One of those complaints came from former WWE developmental talent Kevin Matthews, who took to social media several years ago to discuss accusations about DeMott’s conduct in Deep South Wrestling, even going as far as to produce a photograph of a naked wrestler giving someone else a “stinkface”. DeMott actually addressed some of the Deep South allegations in his book “The Last Laugh” when it was released, citing that many of the talents complaining were just “dead weight” who began to realise that they weren’t as good as they thought and said that many times, he was doing what was asked of him by WWE management and that he had the records to prove such.