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After today’s damning report in The Wall Street Journal, where former WWE employee Janel Grant accused Vince McMahon of sex trafficking after he allegedly stopped payments on a compensation package that she claimed she signed as part of an NDA to keep details of a relationship that she had with McMahon private, TKO has no choice but to not only remove McMahon from all positions within the company, but to move on from him completely.
No more TV interviews.
No more appearing at the bell ringing on Wall Street.
No more appearances of any kind where he would be associated with the company that he created.
It’s time for him to disappear completely.
Now, I want to make this perfectly clear. I am not assigning any guilt of any kind to McMahon here. That is for the legal system to decide, not a reporter. I have my take on what I have read, but I don’t know if any of what alleged against him is true.
For the purpose of this column, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is what McMahon has done in the past, as well as potentially in the future, and the damage it could cause to WWE and TKO in the future.
On what had been a fantastic week for the company, with the Netflix-Raw deal and the return to the company of Dwayne Johnson, WWE was on a huge high. The stock was up. A top Hollywood star had returned home. And most importantly, thanks to the deal with Netflix their global reach was set to grow exponentially. And then, here is McMahon once again killing the proverbial buzz.
No one can say how this lawsuit will turn out. No one can say if the Federal probe into McMahon, which at least started last summer, will go anywhere beyond the investigative stage. We also don’t know if there are any other skeletons that will come crashing out of his closet down the road.
And, that is exactly why TKO warned us in a filing last year that their relationship with McMahon could put negative pressure on the company, and by extension the stock. If you remember, shortly after that filing McMahon sold a huge chunk of his TKO stock which, ironically, did affect the stock adversely. One could surmise that McMahon sold that stock in retaliation to the filing, and that may be exactly why he did it. But in any event, it was a serious sign of how tumultuous a relationship with McMahon, at this stage in his life and career, could be for TKO. As the old saying goes, “There’s a lot of there, there” under the best of circumstances. The allegations that were made in today’s lawsuit go beyond anything I could have ever conjured up in my sickest imagination, whether they are true or not.
Ari Emmanuel doesn’t need that for his company. Nick Khan doesn’t need that for his company. Paul Levesque and everyone else working for WWE doesn’t need it either.
Netflix doesn’t need to be associated with someone like that. NBCUniversal? The same. The CW? Three for three.
And how about “wholesome” corporate partners that WWE has cultivated and grown? What company wants to partner up with someone who has been alleged to have defecated on someone’s head, among other hideous things? Even if none of it were true, the court of public opinion often delivers the real verdict.
At this point, Vince McMahon should do the right thing for everyone involved and walk away. Innocent or guilty of what he was accused of today? At this point, it doesn’t matter anymore. Anyone with an iota of self awareness has to see what liability that they would be at this point. But, I don’t expect Vince to suddenly realize that.
So, the decision falls on Ari Emmanuel. I know that Vince still has a contract with TKO. Most deals like that contain a morals clause. If Vince’s deal has one, I would expect it to be exercised. If he doesn’t, and he doesn’t want to take legal action to remove McMahon from WWE, Emmanuel just has to bite the bullet and pay Vince to stay away, and then later to go away. The stock price hasn’t taken a big hit today, which is good, but if I am Ari it’s not something that I would continue to count on happening if I allowed McMahon to stay and something like this happened down the road.
Vince McMahon has become toxic and that toxin must be eradicated. It’s time for the man who created the WWE Empire and took it to great heights to disappear. There is no other option. It’s time for Vince McMahon to personally hear the words that he made famous, “YOU’RE FIRED!”
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