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Scott Wapner: Is this a good day for Vince McMahon and the WWE or-
Vince McMahon: It's a great day.
Scott Wapner: ... Is it a tough day as well?
Vince McMahon: It's one of the greatest days of my life.
Scott Wapner: This company's been in your family for 70 years, is it a tough day?
Vince McMahon: No, it's a great day. Things have to evolve. Family business, it all has to evolve for all the right reasons. And this is the right business decision, thus far it's the right family decision.
Scott Wapner: What I thought was interesting Ari, is that Vince is going to be the executive chairman of the new company. That implies that he is going to have a say.
Ari Emanuel: Well, I would've said the following, I would've body slammed him if he thought he was going to leave. Because as I said to you before, here's a man who has seen around the corners at every beat over the last 40 years of this business and has a vision for where this business way before a lot of people see it. Him now being able to utilize what we have built in our flywheel, I'm the luckiest guy in the world because I got Vince McMahon, a visionary that sees around the corner. I got Dana White and what we've built, that's pretty unstoppable.
Scott Wapner: So you wanted him to stay?
Ari Emanuel: Oh my god, yes. Oh my god.
Scott Wapner: Did he have to convince you to stay?
Vince McMahon: Oh, not that much.
Scott Wapner: Would you have been content?
Vince McMahon: I love what I do. I've loved building WWE. All my life, it's my passion and to have an opportunity to have it grow like this, an exponential standpoint, it can't be better than that.
Scott Wapner: It's an interesting plot twist because not a lot of people saw this coming. In fact, your own CEO, Nick Khan told our David Faber just back in February, "Vince has declared to the board, to me, to other upper management, he is 100% open to a transaction where he's not included in the company moving forward."
Vince McMahon: Sure.
Scott Wapner: You were ready to walk away?
Vince McMahon: Absolutely.
Ari Emanuel: I wasn't going to let him. We have a relationship for 23 years, there's a trust, there's a friendship. When you're going into business and going forward, I think that's important. I'm glad he chose us because it was a very competitive situation but for us, it's an honor. Also, we're so lucky because of his vision about where the business is and where it's going.
Scott Wapner:The deal values UFC, you mentioned some numbers, 12 billion and WWE at 9.3 billion. That's a big number. WWE's market cap is six and half.
Ari Emanuel: Here's what I would say to this, exactly why we did this, because I think we weren't getting the pure value. I don't think the WWE was getting it.
Vince McMahon: No, we weren't.
Ari Emanuel:Combined, it's rarefied air, the two of us. I think the analysts will be able to do it. It's good for the share shareholders of WWE and for the shareholders of Endeavor. And when you look back, I don't believe that the Endeavor shareholders were getting pure play for the rest of the asset that we had. I think for the first time you now have the ability to do that in both situations and that's a win-win, which is what Vince and I have always talked about.
Scott Wapner: When I throw those kind of numbers out to you, I mean the word on the street was that you wanted nine billion. This values the WWE at 9.3, so despite everything that's happened-
Vince McMahon: I'm a visionary.
Scott Wapner: Well, you hit the number.
Vince McMahon: Yes, deservedly so.
More on Page 3!
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