In case you haven't noticed, there hasn't been much content posted to WWE's gaming channel, UpUpDownDown, and there's a good reason for that.
Fightful has learned that many of the content creators associated with UpUpDownDown has stopped making content for the brand in solidarity with Xavier Woods, as they felt he was getting taken advantage of by a bad deal with UpUpDownDown. We're told they don't plan on posting new content until Woods gets a better deal.
The prevailing belief is that WWE now owns the brand, with Woods selling it years ago, but we're told that is not true. WWE has always owned UpUpDownDown. At no point did Xavier Woods own it, and we're told it even took a long time to green light the project in general. Several WWE sources indicated that the members of UpUpDownDown all felt a sense of loyalty to Xavier Woods for putting them on the platform and pushing for their presences. Those that we've spoken to on WWE's Digital end said that they agreed Woods should have been paid for growing the channel and encouraging more new faces to be involved, completely separate of the acquisition years ago that put it in WWE's hands.
It was stressed that this doesn't mean the end of UpUpDownDown, and ideally, things would resume as normal if the situation was rectified. In the meantime since we began working on this story, Mia Yim was actually released from WWE. In the past, Tyler Breeze and Jessamyn Duke worked on new deals to remain with UpUpDownDown, while Adam Cole departed as he signed with AEW.
In an update on today's story, it's not tough to see why the UpUpDownDown crew thinks Xavier Woods was getting a raw deal.
We're told that Xavier Woods sees little to no additional money at all from UpUpDownDown, and his hosting, G4, UpUpDownDown is all applied towards his downside guarantee. This was said to have been the case for the rest of the regular cast as well. We're told Woods had decided to hold out from creating content until he got a deal for it, which shocked many people involved, as they assumed that not only did he have one in place, but assumed that he was doing well from it. As it turns out, we're told that in relation to gaming, those close to the situation believe he's "not seen an extra dime" from the channel he grew to 2.27 million subscribers.
WWE sources that we've spoken with indicated there's no heat on Woods on the booking side of things, and noted his King of the Ring win and program with Roman Reigns has taken place while the hold out happened. Virtually everyone we spoke to within the company has taken Woods' side on the matter.
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