Malcolm Bivens has been released by WWE.
Fightful Select is reporting Malcolm Bivens is no longer under contract and has been released by the company. According to the report, WWE had pushed Bivens (aka Stokely Hathaway) to re-sign last year, which did result in a short-term contract extension. Bivens was approached again in February about signing another extension, but he made it clear that he did not want to re-sign.
Bivens took some time after the news broke (before he went to get some Zaxby’s) to address his fans, posting the following video:
— Big Stoke (@StokelyHathaway) April 29, 2022
Bivens signed with WWE in March 2019 as a WWE Performance Center recruit, and started with the company as “Court Moore”, the manager of Babatunde. He later changed his name to Malcolm Bivens and served as manager for Rinku Singh and Saurav Gurjar before returning as the manager of Tyler Rust. More recently, Bivens served as the manager of Diamond Mine, the stable consisting of Rust, Hachiman and Roderick Strong. Since then, the group has gone through some lineup changes and the current iteration featured Strong, The Creed Brothers (Brutus Creed and Julius Creed), Ivy Nile and Tatum Paxley, and Bivens.
Prior to joining WWE, Bivens was known as Stokely Hathaway in Ring Of Honor and EVOLVE.
Multiple cuts were made from the NXT roster. In a subsequent update, Fightful reported John Laurinaitis cited budget cuts as the reason for Friday’s talent releases. It was also noted that all talent listed has a 30-day non-complete clause as part of their releases from WWE.
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