WWE Thread (Spoilers)

[Bandit]

It's going to be called The Erotic Tales Of Vincent Kennedy McMahon with nothing but Vince recounting sex stories (Linda mentioned only briefly) and this is the cover

[Dr. Zoidberg]

It will be a top seller with women.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[Bandit]

It's going to be called The Erotic Tales Of Vincent Kennedy McMahon with nothing but Vince recounting sex stories (Linda mentioned only briefly) and this is the cover

Ironic last post before his new sex scandal.

[Big Boss Man]

Its Vince so I doubt it'll turn into a major story but if the mainstream media does look into this further it could potentially turn into a big story. But it's more likely Johnny Ace and/or others Pritchard etc) will be the fall guy(s) for Vince anyway.

[Hawq]

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[Bandit]

Stamford, Conn. – WWE (NYSE: WWE) and the Board of Directors today announced that a Special Committee of the Board is conducting an investigation into alleged misconduct by its Chairman and CEO Vincent McMahon and John Laurinaitis, head of talent relations, and that, effective immediately, McMahon has voluntarily stepped back from his responsibilities as CEO and Chairman of the Board until the conclusion of the investigation. McMahon will retain his role and responsibilities related to WWE’s creative content during this period and remains committed to cooperating with the review underway.

The Special Committee has appointed Stephanie McMahon to serve as interim CEO and interim Chairwoman.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[Bandit]

A Wall Street Journal story on 6/15 noted that the WWE Board of Directors were investigating accusations of payoffs made by Vince McMahon to multiple women that he and Talent Relations head John Laurinaitis had affairs with to keep them quiet.

The start of the investigation into this story started on 3/30 when board members were sent an email that alleged that McMahon had agreed to pay $3 million to a 41-year-old woman who worked as a paralegal, and later as an assistant to Laurinaitis.

The email was anonymous, stating to be from a friend of the woman. While the payoff itself is notable, it apparently came from McMahon’s personal funds and not from the company, which is a key distinction. But what could be the more dangerous revelation is that the article and the letter said that McMahon hired the woman at $100,000 per year in 2019, and then increased that figure to $200,000 after he began having sexual relationship with her. If that was true, that is company funds, and a gigantic impropriety. If her raise can be tied into her affair, Vince McMahon’s future could be in jeopardy.

The reality is that any affair between a boss and employee that they hold power over is considered very questionable, but also happens all the time with business power brokers. But this is part of the “boys will be boys” era of pro wrestling that McMahon was a part of and the modern era where people view things at all companies differently.

The email also used the term that McMahon “gave her like a toy” to Laurinaitis.

The woman was said to have had a law degree but never took the bar exam. She told people she worked with at the company that her career got sidetracked while tending to a sick parent. She started working in the legal department, and then last year became an assistant to Laurinaitis before leaving the company in or around January, when the agreement to pay her to not disclose her relationship with McMahon or disparage him was agreed to.

“My friend was so scared so she quit after Vince McMahon and lawyer Jerry (McDevitt) paid her millions of dollars to shut up.”

The WWE Board of Directors lawyers then asked WWE, McMahon and Laurinaitis to turn over all complaints or allegations regarding any relationships the two men may have had with other company employees. Over the past week, the board apparently learned of other nondisclosure agreements involving McMahon and Laurinaitis. Sources told the publication that the payments to other women totaled in the millions of dollars.

The January agreement was to pay the women upon leaving the company $1 million, and then another $2 million over the next four years.

The stories were written by Joe Palazzolo of the Wall Street Journal, who is on the publication’s investigative team. Palazzolo was part of the Journal team that won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for coverage of secret payments to women who alleged affairs with Donald Trump, and in particular was partially credited with the breaking of the Stormy Daniels story in 2018. Also co-writing stories on the subject were Colin Tessier and Ted Mann.

Eight of the 12 members of the WWE Board of Directors started the investigation in April after first receiving the emails. Of the four who are not part of this investigation, three were Vince McMahon, Stephanie McMahon and Paul Levesque. It is believed the fourth person not involved is company President Nick Khan.

One person who knows of the reasons behind Stephanie McMahon’s decision to leave, which has yet to come out past the family aspect of the story which was part of it, said that this story and her leaving was unrelated.

Still, with the timing and her having knowledge of this for three weeks before she left, one would think there is a tie-in. But the reasons for her leaving dated back to January or earlier and even if this may have added to it, the decision would have been made before the emails were sent to the board.

The other eight board members hired the New York-based law firm of Simpson, Thatcher & Bartlett, LLP to conduct a thorough investigation. The story noted that Man Jit Singh, a former Sony Pictures Home Entertainment executive, is the lead independent director of the board and is running the inquiry.

The other members involved in the investigation are Steve Koonin, the CEO of the Atlanta Hawks and State Farm Arena in Atlanta (notable because AEW in returning to Atlanta is now running at the secondary area in Duluth, GA after debuting at the State Farm Arena), Ignace Lahoud, the CEO of Majid Al Futtaim, Erika Nardini, the CEO of Barstool Sports, Steve Pamon, the President of Verzuz, Connor Schell, and founder and CEO of Words + Pictures, Jeffrey Speed, the former Executive Vice President and CFO of Six Flags, Inc., and Alan Wexler, the Senior Vice President of Innovations and Growth for General Motors.

The firm has a strong reputation and is not a fly-by-night group that would do a fake investigation. It was also noted to us that the firm specializes in Mergers, Finance and Acquisitions, but also specializes in litigation and corporate practices. It has more than 1,000 attorneys and has offices in 11 locations. They worked with KKR in the RJR Nabisco acquisition, represented the underwriters in Google’s $2.7 billion IPO in 2004, represented Tesla in its IPO in 2010, assisted the underwriter’s in Facebook’s $16 billion IPO in 2012 and represented Microsoft in a $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn in 2016 and its $7.5 billion acquisition of GitHub in 2018.

The preliminary findings were that McMahon used his personal money to pay the former female employees who he negotiated nondisclosure agreements with

The firm is also assessing WWE’s compliance and human resources programs and company culture. Wrestling and WWE came from a culture where pretty much anything went when it came to women, and many, both talent and non-talent were in wrestling because of the ability to access women because of being in power or on television that they otherwise would not have access to. Over the decades, the “boys will be boys” mentality changed to a degree, but last year was a pretty major revelation that it was still well behind most businesses.

A spokesman for WWE said the company is fully cooperating with the Board of Directors, and claimed that the relationships between the woman and McMahon was consensual. They said the company takes the allegations seriously and is dealing with them appropriately.

McMahon has been legally married to Linda McMahon for 57 years and have always portrayed themselves as a couple, but have lived largely apart for a long time. McMahon called her his “wife at the time, “ when talking about her in an interview with Pat McAfee, but then tried to walk that line back.

Laurinaitis, 59, was married previously, and in 2016, married Kathy Colace, the mother of WWE stars The Bella Twins, Nicole and Brianna Colace-Garcia. He has been with the company since 2001, hired by Jim Ross to he his talent relations assistant after WCW folded. Prior to that, the younger brother of wrestling legend Joe “Road Warrior Animal” Laurinaitis wrestled as Johnny Ace, and was a major star with All Japan Pro Wrestling during its 90s glory period. He was both a wrestler and had office power working with Shohei “Giant” Baba and Motoko Baba. After Giant Baba died and All Japan’s main talent was leaving for Pro Wrestling NOAH in 2000, Laurinaitis retired as a wrestler and took a job with WCW as an agent. He was a television authority figure for WWE in 2011-2012 using the phrase “People Power.”

At one point Paul Levesque removed Laurinaitis from his position in talent relations when Levesque took over the department in 2012. Laurinaitis kept his job with the company, working as a road agent, before being put back in the head of talent relations position in March 2021. He was put in the position after Mark Carrano was fired due to him sending Mickie James her belongings in a garbage bag, which wasn’t unusual but nobody had ever gone public with it. Carrano was then let go.

Neither McMahon nor Laurinaitis responded to questions regarding the article. WWE has made no public statements on the subject past what the spokesperson said for the story. They have released nothing else.

McDevitt wrote to the Journal that the female employee who was the focal point of the first investigation had not made any claims of harassment against McMahon, and that the company (WWE) did not pay any money to her on her departure. McDevitt didn’t respond to our inquiry on the story.

The company did send out a message to employees and talent, saying, “The Wall Street Journal has published a report about WWE with allegations that we and our Board of Directors take seriously. We are cooperating fully with the investigation. In the meantime it’s business as usual–Vince will be at TV this Friday,” in reference to Smackdown in Minneapolis.

One company employee noted to us that they were told Vince would be addressing talent on Friday regarding this story.

Obviously the biggest question regarding this is the future of McMahon, 76, with the company that he has owned since buying it from his father and his father’s partners for a $250,000 down payment and $750,000 in later payments (which he has said were taken from company profits) in 1982. For $1 million he took over a company that grossed in excess of $1.5 million per year in Madison Square Garden alone. He took the company national starting at the end of 1983 and became the greatest pro wrestling promoter of all-time. Because of the company being in the populous Northeastern markets as its base, he owned the second largest grossing pro wrestling company in the world from day one. New Japan Pro Wrestling was the largest at the time.

By 1984 had become the largest pro wrestling company in the world. With the star power of Hulk Hogan, he built the company up very quickly to where it was grossing in excess of $100 million per year, a level no other company except WCW for a few years ever reached even to this day. Over the next several years he put all the existing regional wrestling promotions out of business, with the exception of Jim Crockett Promotions, which survived as WCW and stayed alive until selling to McMahon in 2001, and Jarrett Promotions, which sold to Larry Burton and Jerry Lawler in 1995, who then sold to investors from Cleveland, and quickly went out of business.

Even though McMahon owns 38 percent of the stock, the nature of how the stock is set up is that he has 80 percent of the stock voting power. Essentially he could not be bought out without his approval, or removed without his approval, regardless of the findings. However, if he is considered by the Board of Directors and stockholders to be a liability, he could be pressured out. There are a number of major Silicon Valley executives who have been accused of similar and less who have lost their positions in companies they’ve built. The story did get traction being covered by almost every major business outlet.

In what could be the first of money such actions, Scott+Scott Attorneys at Law, LLP, a securities and consumer rights litigation firm is attempting to get in touch with WWE shareholders for a potential class action lawsuit and claimed they were investigating whether certain directors and officers of WWE breached their fiduciary duty and whether shareholders have suffered damage as a result.

But because the WWE finances are based on guaranteed revenue during very uncertain economic times, the stock is considered very strong right now. It did drop from $67.18 to $64.87 the day after the story broke, giving the company a $4.823 billion value. But the stock has been on a steady rise for months because of its lack of volatility in revenue guaranteed through late 2024, and the expectation that there will be multiple bidders for the rights at that time to drive the numbers up even more.

The economics are such that even with losing McMahon, its income is guaranteed. Outside of wrestling and in the economic world, McMahon is considered a key figure in the company. The loss of George Barrios and Michelle Wilson with no valid explanation sent the stock tumbling a few years ago, but it has rebounded because unless something unforeseen happens, its profits and revenue will be rising annually. It is also wrestling, and even though McMahon is a well-known public figure, the story could die out.

Stories like this could also lead to more women coming forward, whether it be in the media, or elsewhere.

But this once again opens up the question of the future of the company. Under any circumstances, McMahon is almost 77, and while people point to his mother as living past 100, his father died at 69. He also lived a very wild lifestyle in more ways than one. While people do joke he’ll last forever, nobody actually does.

For more than a decade, the belief was that there would be someone else running the business end, such as a George Barrios type, and more recently, Nick Khan. Over the last six years there has also been more talk of a sale to a bigger player, similar to what happened with UFC in 2016. The talk picked up steam when UFC was told for $4 billion, a number that shocked almost everyone at the time. Today UFC could be worth double that, and WWE would be worth less than UFC, the two companies have a ton of similarities when it comes to most income being guaranteed, thus protected financially from a popularity drop. Stephanie McMahon was always figured to be the public face of the company and her husband, Paul Levesque, would run the wrestling end with the team he put together in NXT.

Now, there is seemingly no plan. Stephanie McMahon is gone. Whether Nick Khan is there to make a deal for a sale or to have a long run at heading business is unknown. Levesque has a bad heart, and it would not be in his best interest to do a job that would be heavy stress and little sleep. Plus, and more importantly, he was demoted from power twice due to his inability to stop AEW from surviving, and second, the idea that his vision of NXT itself was a failure and they changed. Bruce Prichard on paper is second in command, but he is in his 60s and has had health issues, and his beat trait is making Vince McMahon feel comfortable and never rocking the boat. There are very few people who have experience at heading creative of a full-time wrestling company since the places for learning have disappeared.

The talent and virtually all the employees had no idea of this story until it broke. There were suspicions of the woman and McMahon having a relationship, particularly when she was given a promotion in or around April 2021. And at least one person we know of did have awareness of it before the story broke publicly, but there is no indication he told anyone.

A lot of speculation has gone on regarding who leaked the original story. People speculate on which member of the Board, but the reality is people on the board could easily have brought it up to any number of people that could have got it out. The number of potential people could be a lot closer to 50, dozens of whom wouldn’t even be known to have that knowledge but do, than the 12 members of the board.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[Bandit]

"I got too horny. I must return to my home planet, pal"

[Big Boss Man]

How much of WWEs audience is "smartened up" because this could catastrophically backfire if he does the whole Mr McMahon deal rambling on about his misconduct and the investigation into WWE.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[Ocelot]

Well this is quite the entertaining trash fire! *chews popcorn*

[Bandit]

lol you know it's bad when Vince Russo can dunk on you.

[Bandit]

You know who I feel bad for? Paige. She announced she was going to wrestle again and everyone was happy for her. Then Jeff Hardy got arrested. Then the Vince sex scandal hit. Now people forgot. Poor Paige.

[Ocelot]

She just needs to get out of the business at this point. Get away from the bullshit.