Alberto Del Rio To Reach Settlement With WWE, Person He Slapped Once Appeared On RAW
According to FightNetwork.com, WWE and Jose Alberto Rodriguez (Alberto Del Rio) are close to a resolution on his non-compete status and an announcement could be coming in the near future.
On August 7, WWE announced that Rodriguez was fired from the company due to "unprofessional conduct" and an altercation with an employee who allegedly made a racist joke. On August 11, AAA announcer Arturo Rivera stated that Rodríguez would be returning to the promotion at Triplemanía XXII. AAA officially confirmed his return later that same day and started advertising him for the event. In a press conference on August 14, Rodríguez acknowledged that WWE owned the Alberto Del Rio name and also revealed that he would be working for AAA under the new ring name El Patrón ("The Boss"). Rodriguez also announced that for the moment he was under a 90-day no-compete clause, which would prevent him from wrestling for AAA. He later also revealed that as part of his departure from WWE, Del Rio was banned from wrestling in the United States for one year.
On September 2, Rodriguez addressed his non-compete clause with WWE at a press conference for an upcoming AAA event: "It is unconstitutional that you cannot work ... Thanks to lawyers and support of AAA, I can fight without any problems."
Rodriguez confirmed in an interview that the person he slapped was Cody Barbierri, WWE's manager of Social Media Live Events.
"This person made some comments, I slapped him, I feel embarrassed of my actions," he said the week after his release on the Mexican morning news show Primero Noticias of Televisa. "After his comment I stood up and I demanded an apology for what he said, but he smiled and said nothing and I slapped him."
In a trivia note, Barbierri has appeared as a character on WWE programming in the past. On the December 31, 2012 edition of Raw, he appeared as then-WWE Champion CM Punk's personal physician, Dr. Kirshenbaum, who declared in the ring that Punk would be unable to defend his title against Ryback against on the January 7, 2013 episode of Raw due to a knee injury, which you can watch in the video above. This was noted last week by MetsFan4Ever on Reddit.com, a former WWE backstage worker who has broken WWE news and produced multiple shows scripts.
"The guy Del Rio slapped is the guy that was CM Punk's doctor when Punk had his bad knee in late 2012," he wrote. "He appears on camera with Punk out in the ring."