Here's your wrestling news for August 10th, 2022.
And we're kicking off with Vince McMohan who retired last month
due to the allegation of misconduct with female employees.
The wall street journal were the first to report that
McMahon had allegedly arranged a 3 million payout to
one woman in a nondisclosure agreement, forcing WWE
's board of directors to launch an investigation into.
That investigation reportedly uncovered other non-disclosure
agreements with former WWE Employees who claimed
misconduct by McMohan and then head of talent relations.
John Laurinaitis with a total 14.6 Million, either paid
or arranged to be paid by McMohan between 2006 and 2002.
The wall street journal also reported that McMahon allegedly
paid 7.5 million to a former female talent who it's reported.
He coerced in the sex.
And when she later refused, she was demoted and then fired.
Well, the payments were made by McMohan 's personal funds, WWE.
His claimed that the payments were to WWE 's
benefits and therefore should be recorded as.
It's now been over two weeks since McMahon's retirement, but
the investigation into him carries on and there's now been
an update, an improper spending WWE 's latest sec, filing
on Tuesday, revealed an additional 5 million in payments.
McMohan made to two more individuals, which brings
the total number of recorded expenses to 19.6 million.
The company stated that the payments are unrelated to the allegations
that initially led to the special committee's investigation and
WWE is expected to revise its financial statements from 2019
onwards to account for McMahon's improper spending SEC in federal
prosecutors are looking into the payments made by McMohan with
at least eight law firms also investigating whether WWE Engaged
in unlawful business practices at the expense of investors.
WWE will also be looking into their human resources
program and hoping to find out if McMohan did what is
alleged, how he was able to do it for so long McMahon
retired on July 22nd, but he's not out of the woods yet.
And with the alleged misconduct and improper spending
scandals, showing no signs of easing up things may get
much worse for the former chairman before they get better.
Earlier this week, we reported on Tony Khan,
who it's been claimed is difficult to work with.
Right now, there have been reports of Kahn being
less than professional in recent months with one high
ranking member of the backstage team quitting over it
before Khan chased them down and begged them to stay.
This is certainly not a good look for the AEW president.
And we now know more about what's really going on backstage.
According to a source who spoke to ringside news, the atmosphere
backstage has been chaos and things have been worse than normal.
As of late Khan has taken actions to try and quell his outbursts,
promoting a few in the company to help with his workload.
Hopefully that will help as despite the public image of a
fun loving if slightly eccentric company, president Khan
isn't exactly making others at AEW feel welcome at this time.
AEW is in Tony.
Kahn's only promotion as was in March that he announced
the purchase of ring of honor months after the company
announced a hiatus and cut a lot of the roster.
Roh has had two events under Kahn's control, super card of honor,
15 and death before dishonor, but there's still no TV deal just yet.
Now we may have a reason why as according to recently uncovered
trademark documents, Kahn doesn't exactly fully own ring of honor.
In fact, the only copyright that has been transferred so far is
for ROH's video library and the copyright holder for ROH Wresling
entertainment, LLC itself is linked to Sinclair broadcasting.
Tony Kahn is being touted as the owner of Roh, but
that's apparently only in name as a shell company.
He created called acquisitions, LLC is working on
taking control of more of the wrestling promotion.
With Khan not fully controlling ROH this may explain
why the company has had a slow reboot so far as while.
We're sure he'd love to do a ton with the promotion.
Like he's done with AEW thus far.
He still has people he has to answer to.
We've got some news from the world of baseball.
Now as the San Diego Padres, we're not fighting well in their
recent game with the San Francisco giants, but their fans certainly.
During, what would eventually be a won?
Nothing lost to the giants.
Four people got into a brawl in right field with one
fan dragging the Padre supporter down the stairs.
A moment later, two guys jumped into the situation
and began throwing punches in a display that seemed
more suited for pro wrestling than pro baseball.
The men traded blows for a few seconds before the
security guards raced into the action to break it up.
The San Diego police department spokesperson said that security
handled and two subjects were ejected and added that they
were not informed about the fight until it was concluded.
This certainly made for some entertainment
during what was a pretty boring game of baseball.
And we'll make sure to grab some popcorn and hotdogs the
next time, a fight like this breaks out back to WWE as
John Laurinaitis has been fired by the company due to
his alleged involvement in the Vince McMahon scandals.
Laurinaitis's departure comes 21 years after he
signed with WWE following the demise of w C w.
And we've now learned more about his removal from the company.
After PW insider reported that Laurinaitis was fired a week or so ago.
fighiteful select confirmed that report and added
that he was still around in the company's emails.
The report notes that Laurinaitis was still looped into
company emails, even after being placed on administrative
leave, but was briefly removed during the July 22nd SmackDown.
The day of McMahon's retirement.
Laurinaitis was then re-added to the email list and was
said to be receiving sensitive information related to
creative and personal matters, but was pulled for good.
When triple H was named executive vice president of talent relations.
Laurinaitis's name was also added to an internal termination
list, which supposedly also included McMahon's name and
many have expressed their delight that Laurinaitis is gone
with one high profile superstar, branding him a snake.
Johnny ACE is gone and seemingly won't be missed
by anyone in WWE and after over 20 years in WWE,
he'll now have to find another way to make ends.
Meet back to the ring is last week, Soka Sikoa went to war with
Von Wagner in a falls count, anywhere match, whichSikoa won
with a top rope frog splash through the announcer's table.
Unfortunately for Sikoa that match had a toll as on last
night's NXT 2.0, he was seen being attended to by a doctor who
confirmed that the young superstar is out with a torn PCL sprain.
This could be a completely legitimate injury, but it
could also be WWE 's way of writing him off TV creatively.
As the doctor said, he'll be out of action for four to six weeks.
Soka Sikoa recently revealed scrapped plans for him on the main roster
where he'd have been paired with his brothers undisputed, WWE tag
team champions, the USOs and whatever WWE does have planned for him.
We'll have to wait four to six weeks
to find out before WWE 2K22 came out.
The video game was being called a make or break deal.
As it came over two years after the disastrous 2K20.
At the time it was said that if 2K22 was a flop, then WWE would
likely end the relationship with 2Kand instead start fresh with the
folks at EA sports that didn't happen as 2K22 proved to be a hit.
And now WWE 2K23 has been confirmed by 2Ksports parent company.
Take2 interactive.
During their 2022 Q1 fiscal report, it was revealed that WWE 2K22 was
one of the largest contributors to this company's successful quarter.
And while the new game won't be out until next year, the
future of WWE 's 2Kseries is looking very bright and we're
ending with Mark Henry who shocked everyone by joining
AEW last year, but has yet to wrestle for the company.
In fact, Henry hasn't competed in any match for years now.
And during busted open radio with bully, Ray explained
why bully to be honest, to be completely transparent.
I got nerve damage, which is why I don't
wrestle in my back in my sacroiliac joint.
It'll just go out and I'll be on the ground.
And there have been times where I do too much at AEW and
I have to take a wheelchair through the airport and it
sucks because I'm prideful and I hate it when I can't
walk through the airport, feels like my leg is on fire.
I'm not saying for a pity party.
For me, I'm saying that Darren Droszdov is in a wheelchair
for the rest of his life, paralyzed from the chest down.
I know countless other guys that are on canes and in wheelchairs too,
he said, keeping optimism that it's something that won't worsen, but
doctor told me, Hey man, you know, you can surgically get that fixed.
And he said, don't do it until you can't walk no more.
He's like, let that be your last alternative.
So I feel it, but I'm not there yet.
You know what I'm saying?
Henry has said in the past that he hopes to wrestle
in AEW but that doesn't look to be happening anytime.
Soon as years in the ring have taken
their toll on the world's strongest man.