After making some headlines because of his Cameo videos, Ric Flair is offering to reimburse someone who was disappointed with the product they received.
The controversy became a story last month when outlets like People picked up on the negative reviews that Flair’s Cameo videos were getting. In one instance, a woman name Tina said she spent nearly $1,000 for Flair to send a video to her brother Eric in celebration of his wedding. Flair recorded the video in what appeared to be a bar/restaurant — and he told Eric that he should not get married.
“Why would you get married, motherf*cker?,” Flair said. “It’s the worst possible commitment you could do.”
Another reviewer said they spent $600 on a video that Flair recorded while “blasted out of his mind,” with Flair calling their father “Barf” instead of “Buff.”
Flair finally responded to the controversy today and apologized that it took so long to address. Presumably referring to the wedding video, Flair asked the person to reach out to his lawyer to be reimbursed for the money they paid.
I Wouldn’t Want Anyone To Have A Bad Experience As They Keep Pouring In. So To Make Things Right, I Am More Than Happy To Reimburse The Person That Seems To Be Unhappy With Their @Cameo. Please Reach Out To My Law Firm In Boston- Hartman Law. I Apologize For Not Addressing This… pic.twitter.com/vnQTB9mo56
“I Wouldn’t Want Anyone To Have A Bad Experience As They Keep Pouring In. So To Make Things Right, I Am More Than Happy To Reimburse The Person That Seems To Be Unhappy With Their @Cameo,” the 76 year old tweeted. “Please Reach Out To My Law Firm In Boston- Hartman Law. I Apologize For Not Addressing This Sooner.”
Cameo is a service where fans can buy personalized videos from their favorite celebrities. The videos are usually given as gifts for occasions like birthdays and weddings.
As part of WrestleMania week, WWE announced Monday that 25 of their talents will be available for 15 Cameo videos each to be recorded over the next five days.
With costs ranging from $500 to $150, the videos will be recorded starting today through Friday, April 9th. The list of currently available talents and costs featured are as follows:
Randy Orton: $500
Shane McMahon: $500
AJ Styles: $400
Daniel Bryan: $400
Seth Rollins: $400
Big E: $250
Kofi Kingston: $250
Xavier Woods: $250
Drew McIntyre: $250
The Miz: $250
Braun Strowman: $250
Kevin Owens: $250
Damian Priest: $250
Sheamus: $250
Matt Riddle: $200
Cesaro: $200
Apollo Crews: $200
Bobby Lashley: $200
Bianca Belair: $200
John Morrison: $200
Sami Zayn: $200
Omos: $150
Availability for Alexa Bliss ($400), Asuka ($200) and Rhea Ripley ($150) are already sold out.
The company entered into a partnership with Cameo last fall after a new policy was put into place where talents needed to end their individual deals with Cameo and other third parties like Twitch. WWE sold out 30 Cameo $1000 slots for the Undertaker during last November’s Survivor Series week.
WWE’s foray into new third party partnerships has begun as they announced Thursday that the Undertaker will be joining Cameo for a limited run of 30 “personalized video messages which he will fulfill at Survivor Series.”
Requests are being taken now with a cost of $1000 per message.
Undertaker has been doing the media rounds again this week as he prepares for what is being billed as a “Final Farewell” at Sunday’s Survivor Series, celebrating 30 years in WWE.
WWE made news recently after they changed their policy and forbade talent from having their own separate third party deals with Cameo and Twitch. Part of the rationale is to establish broader partnerships with revenue being counted against the talent’s yearly downside guarantee vs. going directly to them. Since Undertaker isn’t an active talent, it’s unknown how his compensation for the potential $30,000 in revenue will work.
WWE talents that have Cameo accounts recently have seen the company logo added to their profile, but neither WWE or Cameo has yet to formally announce a partnership.
Vince McMahon’s edict that still has talent unsure of what it means, stating talent can no longer engage with outside third parties, led to a huge amount of criticism from former talent in the company publicly and privately among current talent.
It also included a number of tweets by former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who indicated that if Joe Biden wins the election and he’s not Secretary of Labor, he’s pretty confident he’ll have the number of the secretary of labor to talk about the “ridiculous classification of WWE wrestlers as independent contractors while controlling their names and likeness for years, even for something as benign as Cameo.”
Other talent usually loyal to WWE complained about this on Twitter, most notably Mick Foley and Kevin Nash, as did a number of former talent including Maria Kanellis Bennett, Gail Kim and Karl Anderson.
Talent does not know in specific what is and isn’t allowed, when it comes to YouTube, Twitch, Cameo or other platforms as the letter was vague. Attempts by us to get the company to define what this means also were not answered.
Another thing going around that confused talent was that Mark Carrano told talent that the company owns the rights to their real names, which presumably meant that they couldn’t revert to using their real names for platforms and usage that WWE would ban them using their stage names for. Saraya Bevis, better known as Paige, changed an account from Paige to Saraya of late which may have spurred that statement. Some felt that meant WWE was claiming the talent no longer owned the rights to their own names, but that would make no sense, although based on contract wording, WWE may be able to prevent the talent from marketing themselves on platforms the company doesn’t want while still under a WWE deal.
Based on a statement WWE sent out today, it appears it refers to individuals making monetary deals on their own which would make it impossible for WWE on its own to market exclusivity in that platform. In many ways this is similar to when UFC would no longer allow companies to sponsor fighters individually during fight week (although they were allowed to have individual sponsors on their own, something WWE talent seemingly can’t have) so UFC could market exclusivity to its own sponsors.
We were told that the key thing that brought this on were talent being on Twitch using their WWE characters and Bang Energy endorsement deals.
WWE’s statement regarding the letter sent out today said “Much like Disney and Warner Bros., WWE creates, promotes and invests in its intellectual property, i.e. the stage names of performers like The Fiend Bray Wyatt, Roman Reigns, Big E and Braun Strowman. It is the control and exploitation of these characters that allows WWE to drive revenue, which in turn enables the company to compensate performers at the highest levels in the sports entertainment industry. Notwithstanding the contractual language, it is imperative for the success of our company to protect our greatest assets and establish partnerships with third parties on a companywide basis, rather than at the individual level, which as a result will provide more value for all involved.”
Talent was upset noting that with the pandemic, those without large guarantees from prior deals are earning less due to no house show pay and lower merchandise pay, and now the company, while still claiming talent as independent contractors, is taking away an outside way to make income that does not affect their WWE performances or work with other promoters. The independent contractor classification has been weird because WWE controls all bookings, interviews, when people work, their work schedule and even how they work and what they say.
The feeling is that because they now have far more time off with the cutback in arena events and travel, that they can use that time to both make money and also market themselves in other platforms as stars which also helps the company with stars being seen in different platforms.
The belief is that YouTube shows are not part of this ban, but that has not been explained in specific. One thing that has been brought up by many is WWE personnel doing podcasts where they get paid that seems to be okay, but other forms of social media where the talent gets paid seems to not be okay.
