Following that, Sandow never won another televised match for WWE. At the 2016 Royal Rumble kickoff, Sandow and Darren Young failed to qualify for the Royal Rumble match when they lost a four-way tag team match. In February, after Sandow posted a tribute to his grandmother on Twitter, possibly indicating her recent death, WWE allowed Sandow to take time off to spend time with family. At WrestleMania 32, Sandow was quickly eliminated from the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal by Shaquille O'Neal. Sandow returned to Raw on April 25, but his match against Baron Corbin never started due to Dolph Ziggler attacking Corbin; with Pro Wrestling Torch describing that Sandow's appearance "got one of the best reactions of the night". Corbin defeated Sandow in under two minutes on that week's SmackDown. On the May 2 episode of Raw, Sandow competed in a battle royal for a shot at the WWE United States Championship, but was eliminated early in the match; the Wrestling Observer wrote that "his elimination was one of the louder reactions in the match". Then, Sandow's final two televised matches for WWE saw him lose to Titus O'Neil on Main Event and Darren Young on Superstars; Sandow wrestled the latter match as a heel. On May 6, 2016, Sandow was released from WWE. His release caused him to become a top 5 Twitter trend in the United States. Mike Johnson of PWInsider described Sandow's release as "mind-boggling" and "shocking" due to "the level of popularity that Sandow has with fans". Johnson listed more of Sandow's positives: "Sandow had size, could talk", and "no matter what role he was in, he received a big reaction": "fans recognized was vastly underutilized by the company and pushed for him to have a bigger role". Meanwhile, the Wrestling Observer described Sandow as "a popular undercard wrestler who always got bigger crowd reactions than his push", while Pro Wrestling Dot Net reported that Sandow, a "popular undercard wrestler", "has been in career tailspin mode for some time" up to his release. Forbes lamented in reference to the releases of Sandow and Wade Barrett: "... it's a hard pill to swallow when you realize that two stars who could have been World champion never got the chance to". Rolling Stone interviewed Haddad within a week of his release. Haddad was "grateful" for a "great" second run in WWE where he "traveled the world"