{"id":130480,"date":"2025-02-04T17:10:17","date_gmt":"2025-02-04T22:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/?p=130480"},"modified":"2025-02-04T17:10:17","modified_gmt":"2025-02-04T22:10:17","slug":"duke-hudson-confirms-wwe-release-shares-immediate-thoughts-on-whats-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2025\/02\/04\/duke-hudson-confirms-wwe-release-shares-immediate-thoughts-on-whats-next\/","title":{"rendered":"Duke Hudson Confirms WWE Release, Shares Immediate Thoughts on What’s Next"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday morning, news broke that Australian wrestler and former member of Chase U and former NXT tag team champion, Duke Hudson, recently received his release from WWE. According to Dave Meltzer, the 35-year-old Hudson, who was signed to the NXT brand in 2019, just never quite rose to the level of expectations. Ultimately, it was Paul Levesque who made the call to release Hudson with Meltzer noting<\/a>, “at some point when you’re 34 and you don’t see him as a main roster guy and he’d been there for six years it’s kind of like that’s the way it works.”<\/p>\n

In late November, Chase U wrestled their final match as Andre Chase lost to Ridge Holland in a bout with the future of the group on the line. Following Chase U disbanding, only Chase has been seen on TV while Hudson, Thea Hail, and Riley Osbourne have been noticeably absent. Hudson’s last match with NXT took place on a house show in November in a victory over Anthony Luke. His last televised match was in September.<\/p>\n

In the hours since the announcement of Hudson’s release, the former superstar has finally offered his own words on the matter. Or rather, his own video as Duke Hudson released an interview<\/a> (with himself) confirming his release and teasing what’s next. In the video, Hudson plays the current version of himself and a much more confident version, who is effectively serving as the devil on his shoulder. That version asks Hudson for his true feelings on wasting the last six years or what it’s been like to watch Bronson Reed, who came up with him, and Rhea Ripley, who grew up watching him wrestle, surpass him. Duke Hudson, who is referred to in the video by his real name, Brandon Vink, is mostly despondent saying he’s happy for his friends but doesn’t really have much to say on his own shortcomings and feelings about his situation. The video ends on a cliffhanger as it’s implied there is another chapter coming soon.<\/p>\n

Hudson’s stablemates have all wished him well with Andre Chase offering the following on X<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
“I just wanted to publicly thank Duke Hudson for all of his hard work and contributions to Chase U. From the poker table, to the classroom, to the tag-team Match of the Year, all the way to top as champions in the WWE. You the real MVP.” <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

More From LWOS Pro Wrestling<\/strong><\/p>\n

Header photo \u2013 WWE<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Stay tuned to the\u00a0Last Word on Pro Wrestling<\/a> for more on Duke Hudson, and other stories in wrestling as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world. You can check out WWE programming on Netflix<\/a>\u00a0(Raw),\u00a0USA Network<\/a>\u00a0(SmackDown),\u00a0The CW<\/a>\u00a0(NXT), and\u00a0Peacock<\/a>\u00a0(archives and premium live event streaming). You can follow WWE on social media and relive top moments on\u00a0YouTube<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday morning, news broke that Australian wrestler and former member of Chase U and former NXT tag team champion, Duke Hudson, recently received his release from WWE. According to Dave Meltzer, the 35-year-old Hudson, who was signed to the NXT brand in 2019, just never quite rose to the level of expectations. Ultimately, it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2418,"featured_media":130481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2192,4,5],"tags":[8689,7855],"class_list":["post-130480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-wrestling","category-wwe","category-nxt","tag-chase-u","tag-duke-hudson"],"modified_by":"Marilee Gallagher, Manager","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2418"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130480"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":130482,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130480\/revisions\/130482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}