In a recent interview with Ariel Helwani, former UFC Heavyweight Champion Cain Velasquez opened up on being released by the company back in April 2020.

“Primarily, it was because of COVID, they had to just drop a lot of the roster in order to just keep their core guys in. I just wasn’t developed enough, I really needed to sit down and practice that style of wrestling for a while and develop a lot more. That wasn’t the case and it was more of, I just didn’t get to develop in that way, they just didn’t use me, I wasn’t called to go in and have them use me.

At one point, they told me we were going to do something with the lucha guys and when that time came close, we were deep into COVID and they were like we’re just doing the shows this way, we just need these core guys. They just needed me to develop a lot more and I wasn’t there yet, they really couldn’t use me in that way, they weren’t using me enough and they were paying me too much, so they had to let me go. I understand, it’s business.”

The full interview is available at this link.