Report: WWE Talent Privately Unhappy About Dakota Kai's Release

Dakota Kai’s recent WWE release was met with widespread criticism from fans, with the former NXT Women’s Tag Team Champion one of the most popular stars of NXT 2.0's women's division.

Now it seems it wasn’t just fans who were disappointed with Kai’s release, with The Wrestling Observer Newsletter’s Dave Meltzer suggesting that WWE talent were ‘privately unhappy’ over Kai’s release:

“Kai had started with the company in an enhancement role as Evie in but didn’t sign her first contract until late 2016," wrote Meltzer. "In recent years, she was one of the top stars in NXT. She also had been offered a new deal and hadn’t signed it, but still, this cut got a lot of private negative feedback by women in the company...

“She [Kai] was very well respected as a worker. But she herself had not signed a new deal and those in the company felt she had made a decision not to stay because she didn’t see a future.”

Kai was one half of the inaugural NXT Women’s Tag team Champions alongside Raquel Gonzalez in 2021, with the pair picking the titles up for one last run after the switch to NXT 2.0. The pair also won the inaugural Women’s Dusty Rhodes Tag team Classic in 2021, and Kai was also the winner of the NXT Women's Championship Invitational in 2018.