During an appearance on the Lightweights Podcast, Chelsea Green detailed the calculated approach she took to her release from WWE in 2021, a process that began with a crucial warning from her husband, Matt Cardona.
Green recounted receiving a phone call from Cardona just moments before the company contacted her.
“Matt called me, like, three minutes before I was fired, and said, ‘You’re about to get fired.’ I don’t know how,” Green stated.
The advance notice provided her with a brief but vital opportunity to prepare for the conversation and decide on her immediate course of action.
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“I’m so glad he did, because it just gave me a split second in my kitchen… to, like, regroup, and be like, ‘How am I gonna handle this?’” she added.
With that foreknowledge, Green immediately began planning her next career steps, identifying promotions she wished to work with.
“I immediately wrote down all the companies that I had not been able to get to before I got signed the first time. So that was like Ring of Honor and NWA,” Green explained.
Following the official notification of her release, she contacted WWE to negotiate an alteration to the standard 90-day non-compete clause. Green proposed forgoing a portion of her pay in exchange for an early termination of the restriction, a move designed to give her an advantage in returning to the independent circuit ahead of her peers.
“Then I called WWE back and asked if I could be released from my contract early. So usually we have, you know, 90 days. I asked if I could be released, I believe, like on day 60 or 70, and forego my pay so I could get onto the indies earlier than the group… WWE said yes,” she said.
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