By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Kevin Nash responded to reports that TKO asked some wrestlers to take 50 percent pay cuts by calling for pro wrestlers to unionize. “You can’t have it both ways,” Nash said on his Kliq This podcast. “You can’t play Endeavor at the top with the 300% increases and 1099 the dock workers…” Nash said. “If they’re going to play by those rules, let the boys play by the same rules.”
Nash suggested that the wrestlers join the SAG-AFTRA. “Go through Screen Actors Guild,” he said. “They’ll be more than happy to take their cut of your money. It won’t be 50 percent, but it’ll change the ball game. Take one of the programs that’s written down, and you tell me that that program isn’t more heavily written and more produced than Curb Your Enthusiasm was when all those actors got SAG paid.” Check out the full Kliq This: The Kevin Nash Podcast with Sean Oliver.
Powell’s POV: Nash is right about WWE typically being more scripted than Curb Your Enthusiasm, which was a heavily improvised (and hilarious) show starring Larry David. While there are pros and cons to joining a union, pro wrestlers being classified as independent contractors has always felt flawed. It’s worth adding that WWE also has a non-union production crew.
Back in 2020, Gabrielle Carteris, who was the SAG-AFTRA President, issued a statement to WrestlingInc.com regarding pro wrestlers joining the union.
“Wrestling is as much about media as it is sports, and we are going to directly engage with members of this profession to help find ways for them to protect themselves,” Carteris said. “As more people reinvest in unions, and as more working people are harassed by employers who don’t want to protect them, SAG-AFTRA is committed to doing what we can to help professional wrestlers secure the protections they deserve.”
Six years later, actor Sean Astin is the President of SAG-AFTRA. Astin replaced actress Fran Drescher, who took over the role after Carteris’s term.
(Jason Powell, founder and editor of ProWrestling.net, has covered pro wrestling full-time dating back to 1997. He hosts a weekly podcast, Pro Wrestling Boom, and also appears regularly on the Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Podcast. Reach him via email at dotnetjason@gmail.com and on social media via @prowrestlingnet.bsky.social or x.com/prowrestlingnet. For his full bio and information on this website, click here.)
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