Mandy Rose has received some public support after her WWE release over racy photos.
Rose was released from WWE on Wednesday after she published racy photos and videos on her FanTime page, a subscription platform similar to OnlyFans. In recent days, she had posted photos in the shower with her fiancé, Tino Sabbatelli, as well as a solo skinny dipping video. The content ranged somewhere between R- and X-rated.
On Instagram, Sabbatelli supported his fiancée, posting a photo of Rose as NXT champion, with the caption “The baddest bitch that Game has EVER seen. Period.”
Rose also received support from several women’s wrestlers. Her former teammates in the Toxic Attraction tag-team, Gigi Dolin and Jacy Jayne, both had tweets that included broken heart emojis. Cora Jade, another wrestler in NXT, tweeted emojis of a Rose and a heart.
Former WWE performer Maria Kanellis wrote a tweet showing that she posed for Playboy in 2008 as a WWE talent — something that several women who worked for WWE have done in the past, though not lately — and a racy photo that she was allowed to post as a current worker for rival AEW.
The issue of talents making extra income on third party platforms has been thorny in WWE for several years. Performers gain notoriety and significant social media followings as part of WWE, which opens up opportunities like the one in which Rose is exploiting — there is a market for her to share this content to subscribers at an eye-popping rate of $40 a month.
In 2020, WWE made it clear to talents that they ran the risk of termination if they participated in third-party business ventures — such as Cameo, Twitch or generally advertising products on their social pages — without looping in WWE.
Vince McMahon, who has since stepped down from leading the company, wrote in a letter to talents that they must cease relationships with third-party businesses within 30 days, or be subject to “fines, suspension, or termination at WWE’s discretion.”
Zelina Vega was released from WWE for creating an OnlyFans page that did not have provocative content and was brought back the following summer.
While the third-party policy seems to have been somewhat relaxed since previous austerity, the raciness of Rose’s content seems to have crossed a line for WWE that the company would not abide.
The 32-year-old Rose had been NXT’s women’s champion for over 400 days until she dropped the belt to Roxanne Perez on Tuesday night. It was a relatively stunning development for a reign of this magnitude to conclude on normal television rather than pay-per-view. The storyline implications made more sense Wednesday morning on the news of her release.