Vanessa Borne, Jessamyn Duke, Alexander Wolfe, and other WWE NXT talents released

Unfortunately, there have been several WWE NXT releases this afternoon.

Thus far, both Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful and Mike Johnson of PWInsider have confirmed the following releases.

• Vanessa Borne
• Jessamyn Duke
• Kavita Devi
• Alexander Wolfe
• Skyler Story
• Ezra Judge
• NXT referee Jake Clemons
• NXT referee Drake Wuertz

Johnson reports that these releases are coming today due to budget cuts. It's not certain whether these are all of the releases today as more might be coming later.

The biggest surprises from this list are Vanessa Borne, Jessamyn Duke, and Alexander Wolfe. The latter was seen last night on WWE NXT when he lost to Killian Dain and was then kicked out of Imperium.

While Vanessa Borne had been called up to the main roster for quite some time, she never made her official debut on RAW or SmackDown, so it appears WWE still considered her to be an NXT talent.

Jessamyn Duke was recently a regular on the WWE YouTube channel Up Up Down Down as part of the stable B.R.E. with Dakota Kai, Shayna Baszler, and Mia Yim. This will leave a hole in that group that will be hard to fill going forward.

I'm hearing Kavita Devi, Jessamyn Duke, Vanessa Borne released as well

— Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful.com (@SeanRossSapp) May 19, 2021

Several WWE NXT releases today due to "budget cuts"

One release that was not a surprise was NXT referee Drake Wuertz, who has been at the center of controversy as of late over.

His recent behavior regarding wearing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic led to him presenting his argument during a Florida Board meeting over Zoom while wearing his NXT polo.

These WWE NXT releases come just over a month after a large number of departures from the WWE main roster following WrestleMania 37.

SRS from Fightful revealed that most NXT talents only have a 30-day non-compete clause compared to the 90-day ones that the talent on the WWE main roster have.

The NXT talent releases mostly have a 30-day non-compete clause

— Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful.com (@SeanRossSapp) May 19, 2021

What do you make of today's WWE NXT releases? Do any of the names surprise you? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.