The situation with former WWE star and presumably current AEW star Andrade was already wild after the wrestler left WWE for AEW, returned to WWE and then popped up AEW Dynamite earlier this month.

Things hit the next level when Andrade quietly disappeared for the last two weeks and as reported earlier today, a possible one-year WWE non-compete clause might be at the crux of the situation.

After returning to AEW on Dynamite, WWE reportedly sent AEW a cease-and-desist indicating that Andrade is still under contract to them and would not be legally able to compete or even appear elsewhere.

This oversight was not pinned on either AEW or Andrade as everyone – including WWE employees – were under the assumption that Andrade was completely done with the company with no inkling of a non-compete. When that happened, Andrade immediately began accepting indie bookings and ultimately signed with AEW.

With WWE’s cease-and-desist causing AEW to pull Andrade off of TV, it ended up causing immediate changes to AEW’s creative plans for Dynamite and WrestleDream, according to fightfulselect.com, but the report stressed that there is no heat on Andrade for the mix-up and the company still has plans to bring him back and use him once the situation with WWE is cleared up. The fightful report added that a person close to Andrade revealed that he is in “good spirits” despite all that happened but was staying low for the time being.

Perhaps what has made the situation even more confusing is that WWE is currently not paying Andrade as they would normally do for a normal non-compete (which technically is not an accurate term for WWE’s process).

Under usual circumstances, WWE gives notice to a talent that they are being released but the company continues to pay them for 90-days which the wrestling industry has termed “non-compete” as they have to wait that time before signing elsewhere.

However in Andrade’s situation because he wasn’t being paid, everyone in WWE assumed he was free and clear to go work elsewhere.