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While a wrestling company is under no legal obligation to release a talent who asks for it, I think the bigger thing is...if you're going to keep them, what will you do to address the concerns that led to asking for the release to begin with?
In the case of Brodie Lee, when he publicly asked for his release they sent him home, told him they had no plans to release him but no plans to use him either, and he waited at home for months and months to be given something to do. They finally called him 6 months later for what ended up being like a 3 week angle and then it was back to waiting months before they actually let him go.
Mustafa Ali was also sent home for months after publicly asking to be let go, seemingly with no communication with the office. He finally got brought back but, similarly, his angle ended just as soon as he started and he's back to passive aggressively tweeting about catering and Main Event.
We don't know what discussions were had with Malakai and Buddy but it sounds they've agreed to give them time off to handle some personal matters. But what happens when they come back? Will they actually be booked in a matter that they're happy with? Or will it be the same stop-start shit they've been doing all year where we see them wrestle once a month?
Not every talent is going to be happy. That's the nature of the beast. It's fine to deny a release if you feel you can smooth things over and patch things up. But if you just go right back to barely using them then yeah, it starts to make the company look petty.
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