Velveteen Dream makes first comments since WWE release

Image: WWE

In a Monday Instagram story that focused heavily on past allegations, Velveteen Dream made his first comments since being released by WWE last Thursday.

Dream (Patrick Clark) denied the accusations by Josh Fuller and “Jaccob” that arose during the Speaking Out movement in April 2020. He first focused on Fuller, saying he met him in 2015 after Tough Enough through a mutual pro wrestling trainer. They struck up a friendship, but Clark said their relationship eventually frayed in 2018 after he suggested Fuller take a break from wrestling training after he suffered a concussion in 2017.

“To have him accuse me of predatory behavior because I chose not to help is spiteful,” he wrote.

After sharing some additional notes about Fuller and Jaccob’s social media accounts, Clark said the experience of working through the accusations defamed his character and “ultimately accomplished what it sought out to do and that was to see me released.”

He said he hopes people eventually realize the allegations were untrue and that they derailed any upward momentum he had and ultimately cost him his WWE job.

“God has always had me and he always will. Dream is officially over, but Patrick Clark lives to fight another day.”

He then talked about the Dream character and that the reason he didn’t initially go public with denials was because, to him, “addressing rumors would be working against an already compromised ability to sell a character I’d invested in heavily” and that he takes any job he has seriously.

He then focused on “Jaccob,” another aspiring wrestler who had DM’d him about advice. He detailed their communication and said that on April 21st, he woke to screenshots of conversations that never happened. He said he contacted WWE HR and the social media team and that after an investigation, WWE released a statement supporting his innocence.

“The part that hurt for me was having a personal picture that I’ve used in my personal life, an apps, being used to label me a predator. I am in no way of the word a predator. This is the first and only time I’ve been accused of any solicitation to anyone.”

Part of the sixth season of Tough Enough, the 25-year-old was signed by WWE in the fall of 2015 and worked under his real name for nearly two years before adopting the Velveteen Dream character. He hadn’t competed in a match since December 2020, losing to Adam Cole on NXT’s weekly TV. He had been used sparingly through the last four months of the year, wrestling just five times.