Just 24 hours after the Wall Street Journal broke that the WWE board is investigating
its own CEO and Chairman, Vince McMahon, for allegedly paying a former employee he had
an affair with, WWE released a statement announcing Vince has “voluntarily stepped back from
his responsibilities as CEO and Chairman of the Board until the conclusion of the investigation”
Replacing him will be his own daughter Stephanie McMahon, who herself left the company the
previous month.
In wrestling terms, this is called ‘hotshot booking’.
You’re going to kill the territory, guys.
Here is a timeline of the various incidents leading up to this announcement.
The Wall Street Journal has reported a female paralegal joined WWE’s corporate team in
2019 on a salary of $100,000 a year.
That number is possibly the most important part of WWE’s investigation, so remember
it.
She started an affair with Vince McMahon, who is still legally married to Linda McMahon.
A WWE spokesperson has said the relationship between Vince and the paralegal was consensual.
The report then alleges the paralegal’s salary doubled to $200,000 after she began
a sexual relationship with Vince.
It also alleges Vince “gave her like a toy” to WWE’s Head of Talent Relations John Laurinaitis.
In a weird case of everyone being connected to someone in the wrestling industry, Laurinaitis
is married to Kathy Colace, who is the mother of the Bella Twins.
Making John Laurinaitis Bryan Danielson’s father in law.
Laurinaitis is most publicly known for his brief onscreen antagonist role against CM
Punk in 2011.
Before then he has been a long term corporate figure in WWE, running their Talent Relations
- which is to say, dealing with the wrestlers’ logistics and HR issues - for the better part
of a decade.
This role ended in 2012, though.
WWE rehired him as the Head of Talent Relations on the 10th March, 2021 - implying Vince ‘sharing’
(gross) the paralegal with him occurred over the last year period.
The paralegal then left WWE in January 2022.
In order to get her to quote “shut up”, a $3 million NDA settlement was arranged by
Vince’s personal attorney Jerry McDevitt.
McDevitt, oddly, is also the head laywer for WWE.
It is very unusual for the same lawyer to represent both a CEO and the company they
run, but that has been the case since the 90s.
$1 million was reportedly paid up front, with the remaining $2 million to be paid out over
the next several years.
It bars her from talking about her relationship with McMahon.
McDevitt has said “WWE did not pay any monies” to the paralegal.
This is an important part of Vince’s defence.
Paying a lot of your own money for something like this is icky, but not illegal.
Using company funds to do that, however, would be serious misconduct.
That’s why the $100,000 raise figure is so important, because that would be using
company money.
From February to March 2022, the Road to WrestleMania, it is believed someone claiming to be a friend
of the paralegal sent emails to WWE’s board, making the allegations against Vince McMahon
- which directly led to the Board starting their investigation.
But who is the Board?
What is a Board?
Why is a Board?
Sidebar: a board is not the people who run the company.
The board is a group of people elected by the shareholders, who sit above the people
who run the company and hold them to account.
They are made up of a mix of important people in the company, and often high level former
executives from outside the company.
WWE’s, for instance, has the names you’d expect - Vince McMahon, Nick Khan, Stephanie
McMahon and Paul Triple H Levesque . But the rest is made up of top level business people
from outside the company, like Alan Wexler, a Senior Vice President at General Motors,
and Erika Nardini, the CEO of Barstool Sports.
These are the people the leaker was emailing about the NDA agreement.
Back to the timeline.
The board instructed the New York based law firm Simpson, Thacher and Barlett LLP to start
the investigation.
Simpson, Teacher Barlett, name of your new NXT 2.0 gimmick.
The Wall Street Journal reports the investigation uncovered more NDAs of a similar nature - we
don’t know how many - including Vince and Laurinaitis.
In what could totally be a coincidence.
Just a, you know, real weird case of the exact same timing.
Stephanie McMahon, Vince’s daughter, announced on the 19th May she would be taking a leave
of absence from the majority of her responsibilities in WWE to spend more time with her family.
She appeared to be removing herself from the duties of being WWE’s Chief Brand Officer,
but, importantly, remain on the board of directors.
It was assumed at the time this was a consequence of her husband HHH very real life threatening
cardiac event last Summer, that she wanted to spend more time at home.
Since the Wall Street Journal report broke, some have speculated it could have been to
distance herself from WWE and her father in case the investigation became public.
But just several weeks later on the 7th June, a story in Business Insider claimed Stephanie
was performing so poorly in her role, her father Vince forced her out.
Which unfortunately isn’t as shocking as you would think, seeing that he also fired
his son Shane back in February for a backstage clash.
The Business Insider report was widely regarded as a hit piece from WWE themselves, with Vince
angry at Stephanie abandoning him and his company - possibly in one of his greatest
times of need.
The Wrestling Observer have since claimed the reason was “to preserve the stock price”
as the outside world could see Stephanie, potential heir to the throne, leaving WWE
and start a sell off.
Great strategy guys, all bullets dodged and great you didn’t bury someone you might
desperately need to bring back imminen- Oh no, wait, that’s exactly what they did.
And then, just over a week following WWE’s own alleged hit piece on Stephanie, they got
a potentially fatal shot in their face from the Wall Street Journal - which includes the
troubling insinuation that, from the paralegal’s perspective, her relationship with Vince did
not end up consensual.
“My friend was so scared so she quit after Vince McMahon and lawyer Jerry paid her millions
of dollars to shut up”.
Allegations so strong, so potentially damaging, the unthinkable has happened.
For the first time in 42 years, Vince McMahon is no longer the CEO of WWE.
On the 17th June, the day after the Wall Street Journal article was published, WWE and its
board of directors announced Stephanie, the same person the company had just buried for
being bad at their job a week previously, would be replacing her father Vince as interim
CEO and interim chairwoman.
They will then face each other at SummerSlam to crown an undisputed head of the company.
That’s how business works right?
Oh no, here’s Shane with the Money in the Bank contract!
I’ve tried to stay as factual as possible up until this point.
Now, it’s time for speculationamania to run wild, baby!
Firstly, why Stephanie McMahon, the person who just left, when you’ve got a perfectly
good Nick Khan right there?
She’s a woman!
It is freaking weird how closely a lot of this scandal has parallels with the HBO series
Succession.
In that show, spoilers, a big controversy explodes where the CEO has to fend of allegations
of a toxic workplace and cover ups of sexual assault.
Who’s the leading person to replace him while he ‘steps down’?
If you answered all these crusty old white guys, you’d be wrong.
The answer was, first, his daughter Siobhan, before they settled on the only other chick,
Legal Counsel Geri.
It’s good PR.
If a company is facing allegations of treating women like crap, it helps if you suddenly
announce the new person ‘running’ the show is a woman.
You’ll note I keep doing ‘running’ and ‘steps down’ in quotes.
Because another thing in Succession is that the CEO who steps down really does keep running
the company behind-the-scenes, it’s just a public facing smokescreen.
And don’t get me wrong.
I see this all as cynical, saving face PR.
If this was a moral action, this decision would have been made as soon as the investigation
was agreed upon by the board of directors.
The timelines quite clearly shows the main driver for Vince ‘stepping down’ is because
the investigation has become public.
And, again, if this was planned, they would’ve have buried Stephanie just last week.
This has all the appearance of a decision that was only made in the last 24-48 hours.
But ovaries aren’t the only reason Stephanie makes the perfect replacement in this scenario.
There’s also the fact she was seemingly out the door already.
Done, finished, checked out.
An interim position during a time like this is a lightning rod.
She’s going to have to grin through a lot of crap, business questions, investigative
reporters, angry shareholders, offended fans.
Nobody wants to be the owner of a burning house, and fair or not, she will become the
public face of WWE’s response.
The best political play I can see is to be the person in the background, waiting for
this storm to blow over, and you can step into the light, unscathed, ready to restore
this institution to its former glory.
I just have no idea who that could be.
When I first heard of the investigation, I sadly wasn’t shocked.
Cynically, I never saw it as an actual threat to the powers that be in WWE.
Laurinaitis would take the fall, Vince would rule forever.
Now I’m not so sure.
What do you think will happen to Vince McMahon and WWE?
Let me know in the comments, and please subscribe to WrestleTalk for daily wrestling news videos.
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