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DIGESTING THE EVENTS OF YESTERDAY’S SORDID ALLEGATIONS AGAINST VINCE MCMAHON AND HOW THEY AFFECT WWE

Well, yesterday was quite the day, that’s for sure.  As I am sure anyone reading this knows by now, alleged sordid activity attributed to Vince McMahon was all over pretty much every news outlet after the filing of the lawsuit by former WWE employee Janel Grant.  There is no need to recap the whole thing since we covered it in-depth yesterday.  Instead, I want to digest some of what we learned, some feedback I have received and also throw out some takes on what TKO/WWE needs to do going forward. At the top of the list….

TKO needs to rid itself of Vince McMahon.

Yesterday’s story got coverage pretty much everywhere.  It is getting coverage again today.  It’s not going to go away quietly, and that doesn’t even take into account other shoes that could drop from other women or the Federal government’s investigation into McMahon.  The fact of the matter is that Vince McMahon has become an extremely big liability, for reasons listed in my column yesterday.

But, that isn’t even the biggest problem that he brings to the company at this point.  As I said yesterday, my role is not to determine guilt or innocence where the lawsuit is concerned.  One also has to acknowledge that when one party sues another, they will write the suit to read as damning as possible to the other party.  That’s the way it works.  I don’t know how much of what Grant alleges is true and how much is not.  But, there is a bigger issue.

What can’t be explained away are the disgusting, deviant text messages that Vince McMahon is alleged to have sent to Grant.  Since they have been included in a lawsuit we have to assume that they exist and they came from him.  These aren’t allegations, they are facts.

Even if there were no lawsuits and Vince had sent those same texts consensually to a willing partner, then somehow someone cloned McMahon’s phone and released the texts, he would still have to go.  Normal, decent people read those texts and, well, they see a deviant, at best.

NBCU got rid of Matt Lauer for similar alleged behavior.  Do you think they, or new partner Netflix, wants to be associated with McMahon?  Or any other company for that matter?  To the public now he’s the guy, who by his own admission, likes to do some really bizarre things.  That is the kind of person companies avoid, not embrace.

As I said yesterday, I don’t know what his contract with TKO calls for in a situation like this.  If there is a morals clause, it sure as hell seems to have been violated simply by his texts.  If they can’t get out of the deal that way, they need to pay him to just go away and make a clean break with him other than his investment in TKO, which has zero effect on the running of the company.  If he sells more of his stock in retaliation, it will probably make the market happy this time.  

My hope is that we get a Friday night news dump today telling us that he is gone from TKO, never to return.

Collateral Damage

*If it’s me, I am avoiding Brock Lesnar this Mania season, if not longer.  While he wasn’t named and isn’t being sued, The New York Times cited him (and to be fair, the lawsuit made it crystal clear who they were referring to).  Luckily for WWE, HHH and his team have done such a great job with creative that there is no need for Lesnar right now.  CM Punk just returned, as did Randy Orton and The Rock.  WWE is loaded right now.  They should stay far away from Lesnar since if he returned it would bring the sordid tale back to life.  The company’s main goal has to be to make it go away right now.

*What will happen with allies that were close to Vince if the company releases him?  There are definitely partners that WWE has where there is a close relationship to Vince.  For instance, he is a pivotal player in the relationship with Saudi Arabia.  If the company releases him, what happens next?  My guess is that in most, if not all, cases those relationships will at worst be soothed over since TKO can offer WWE and at best will improve because there have to be allies of Vince’s that no longer want any association with him after those texts surfaced.

Some complaints I have heard from people in the last day:

*The independent committee never talked to Grant or asked her for information.

This was written in the lawsuit and maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t.  I don’t know.  I am not a lawyer and I don’t play one on TV but I do wonder a few things.  While they were investigating the NDAs, what did they know?  They obviously knew they existed and found evidence of them doing a forensic accounting audit when they found funds were misappropriated. Did the committee know the women’s names?  And, if they did know their names, did they skip contacting them because the women signed NDAs, which would preclude them from answering any questions since doing so would violate the NDA and make them liable for damages?  After all, the women who signed those documents had no responsibility to help in an investigation and my layman’s take is that doing so would violate the agreement, which ironically is what Vince himself ended up doing and it led to this mess.

*How can Stephanie be brought back after what she knew?

I suggested yesterday that TKO fire Vince and replace him with his daughter on the Board.  I will say it again today.  Some people have written me things like, “How can you do that with what she knew and did nothing”.  This is why I hate, hate, hate hot takes.  People react without thinking.  

What did she actually know?  She found out about NDAs.  Guess what was NOT in the NDAs, if she was even able to read them?  Vince’s texts!  The allegations Grant released yesterday!  All of the sordid information we all heard yesterday.  All she knew was that he was being investigated.  Do you really think Vince shared those vile texts with his daughter?  Come on.

You know what else she did?  She left, I would guess that she did so when she heard about the NDAs.  She said she was going to spend time with family.  I have no issue with that.  She was an officer in the company.  She had a fiduciary responsibility to the stockholders.  Her saying something like, “I am leaving because my dad is a scumbag” would be unprofessional and would hurt the stock, which she had a responsibility to protect.

So what did she do?  She left.  Then when he left, which I hoped was for good, after the allegations surfaced, she came back in and saved the day with Nick Khan, working together.  When Vince forced his way back in, she left again.

Read between the lines people, she did all she legally and professionally could to do the right thing.  People in the Tower loved her when she was there.  She treated people well.  She is proverbial good to Vince’s evil.  I would love for her to return.

One more thing, if you don’t want her back, you have to get rid of Nick Khan too since he was in the same spot she was, but never left.  And for the record, NICK KHAN SHOULD STAY.  

*Why aren’t wrestlers speaking up? 

Again, while I appreciate the passion that some have, it shows me that they don’t understand business and the real world.  Trust me, I spoke to a lot of people yesterday and today that work for WWE and are disgusted by the texts, at minimum.  But if you think that TKO wants 100 wrestlers tweeting about Vince’s texts and keeping the story even more alive than it already is, you have tunnel vision and don’t see the big picture.  At the end of the day, what Vince said in his texts is more damning than any comment any wrestler could make about him.  

With that said, The Road To WrestleMania begins tomorrow.  My hope is that the Road From Vince McMahon dead ended yesterday.

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