So, yesterday, 1:05 Pacific, Vince McMahon tweeted this:
At 77, time for me to retire.
— Vince McMahon (@VinceMcMahon) July 22, 2022
Thank you, WWE Universe.
Then. Now. Forever. Together. #WWE #thankful
Three weeks beforehand, he had told everyone who would listen: “Fuck them.” “I'm going to be here.”, etc.
So the entire discussion of the last, probably, going on 36 hours now has been several-fold:
First, who else is going? Long-maligned producer Kevin Dunn and fitness-model magazine enthusiast John Laurinitis are the first two candidates. (The latter, especially now with HHH/Paul Levesque returning as the head of Talent Relations, announced earlier on Friday.)
Second, what for the future of the company?
I'm afraid that might tie in to the question everyone has been asking most, however:
What has whom uncovered that the other parties in the WWE Board of Directors (the real group, not the “kayfabe” (storyline) group) have found out to force McMahon out so quickly and precipitously?
Let's go over, both in this present sexual-harassment situation and in the past, a not-exhaustive list of what we KNOW Vince McMahon has done in his 40-year reign of terror to either reshape professional wrestling into sports entertainment or kill it trying...
Before Hulkamania and the national expansion, Vince McMahon's #1 babyface (good guy, crowd is supposed to cheer) was a recently-turned Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka. On May 10, 1983 – about eight months before Vince Jr. used Hogan as his centerpiece to break the territory system – Snuka is understood to have rammed the head of Nancy Argentino, a mistress, to the point where she murdered by the “Superfly”. Almost no one had ever heard of this murder until the podcast era – Vince McMahon openly accessoried after the fact to cover up Argentino's death and continue to “push” (spotlight) Snuka. So much so, Snuka was not finally indicted by a grand jury for the murder until just before his death in 2015. There is even a belief that Vince Jr. brought the proverbial “suitcase of cash” to try to end the investigation – Vince denies this.
About the same time, Vince McMahon Sr. sold his wrestling company to his son and the Titan Sports conglomerate Jr. was building. The deal was apparently begun in June of 1983. There was significant concern within the halls of the National Wrestling Alliance (though, contrary to the initial story many in the NWA have purported for decades, until the podcast era, it appears that at least two major promoters (Ole Anderson in Georgia, Verne Gagne in Minnesota) were also in the process of doing this) that McMahon would set out to dismantle the territories. Such was the concern that Vince Sr. aided in consummating the deal by handshakes with all of the other NWA promoters this would not happen. Vince Jr. admits, by 1991, that had he not lied openly to his father about his aims, Sr. never would've sold the company.
The boom of the WWE soon followed, with an eight-year period where the steroids flowed freely and the WWE slayed all in their path, ending the territory system, as Vince wanted. This culminated in the 1992 trial of Dr. George Zahorian. Dr. Zahorian was convicted. Vince and the WWE were largely exonerated – as the general public largely understood the massive behemoths (and the men who you might not expect having taken steroids to handle the road and physical demands!) in the day of 300-350 nights a year...
A 1993 series of sexual harassment charges followed.
After a boom period and the infamous Monday Night Wars no-holds-barred brawls with Ted Turner and WCW, a capacity crowd in Kansas City, MO screams in horror as Owen Hart was killed due to negligence in a rappelling stunt from the top of Kemper Arena on May 23, 1999.
Not only did it appear that Vince had little remorse to the event, the show went on that night – to much criticism from all sane parties.
A 2014 concussion lawsuit exposing the WWE (and pro wrestling in general) with vicious blunt-object shots to the head for many years was ignored by the courts in 2021.
Perhaps the biggest recent issue is the WWE and Vince Jr. being in the forefront of the Saudi Arabia “sportswashing” angle, including at least one incident where it appears a money dispute between McMahon and the Saudis caused a touch-and-go kidnapping of nearly Vince's entire relevant roster, which could've ended with every one of them being executed, had MbS had the whim to do so!
The undisputed nature that the WWF (renamed the WWE after, somehow, they lost a lawsuit on confusion grounds to the World Wildlife Fund) held as the top (if not ONLY) relevant company in the 2000's and much of the 2010's smoothed some of this...
… though the podcast era, where former wrestlers of the boom periods now hawk their wares and their stories on the Internet, has brought new and fresh problems.
The largest of these is not the current sexual harassment admissions, but the discussion of The Plane Ride From Hell. It was a trans-Atlantic flight WWF (just before the loss of the lawsuit that week in 2002) talent took, coming home from a European tour and pay-per-view. Alcohol flowed freely. Sexual assaults of several female plane staff led to large settlement payouts to the women – one of them basically literally “exposed the business” of decades-long legend Ric Flair as a complete sex pest pig. Several brawls almost crashed the plane. Several parties were disciplined, no one was rightly fired.
The complete disregard of the talent (both in- and outside-ring) in the name of Vince and The Show being the centerpiece. Examples are innumerable, but include a couple of “screwjobs” against champions who would not play along, the denigration of longtime WWE voice Jim Ross and his bouts with Bell's Palsy (including a tasteless surgery angle which “heel” (bad guy, crowd boos) Vince acts as if he's extracting a bust of Ross' head from his posterior, telling all that if they are like him, they have their head up their ass...).
Perhaps culminating, in that regard, in the double-murder/suicide by wrestling talent Chris Benoit in 2007. Benoit, known to push himself beyond all sane limits for the perfection of his craft, was encouraged by WWE to continually leap from the top rope (if not from an extra height of 15 feet in a cage match!) to headbutt opponents – creating massive CTE. Any sane person would now understand that Benoit was so out of his mind with the brain disease, there were three victims that night...
And I could go on and on about just that stuff. Here's some of the stuff we already know about which has felled Vince out of the company, at least as of right now:
On June 15, 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported a $3,000,000 hush payment to a mistress paralegal, hired by the company in 2019, for a consensual sexual relationship with the CEO in his 70's.
Three days later, Vince tried to make a play at “stepping back” as the WWE Board of Directors (actual) was investigating.
Within two more weeks, WSJ reported that, in fact, at least four women had received such payments, going back to at least 2006.
From what is being reported, it appears this extended to talent, as former “diva” Ashley Massaro has been reported as a victim of Vince's attentions. Which makes you openly wonder if the entire point of the “Diva's Division” and what I called “The Striptease Championship” was to get in Vince's (or the aforementioned talent head Laurinitis') pants!!
Massaro, we later found out, was passed around like a joint for sexual pleasure of men in a 2016 Middle Eastern tour. She committed suicide in 2019.
And that's just a completely non-exhaustive list of what we KNOW. Now dig a bit deeper:
Owen Hart's mother still believes that Vince deliberately killed Owen. After hearing what Owen believed may happen to him in Kansas City (he had that “bad feeling”) and the Dark Side of the Ring episode on Owen's death, I agree – and believe Owen was killed for the ultimate crime in Vince Jr.'s eyes: Wanting to leave WWE and have a life of his own.
It is almost a certainty that any woman of any degree of attractiveness within the WWE company was being groped, assaulted, harassed, and more by SOMEBODY within the company – as an expectation of employment.
A long-standing coverup of Pat Patterson and his relationship with some of the ring crew flared up briefly.
And the big question...
What has been found out in the last 3-4 weeks which has forced Vince McMahon to publicly declare (you can make your jokes, etc. about whether it's actually happening) retirement as the head of the company?
It is clear that there is more sexual harassment, and a LOT MORE sexual harassment. I think it is clear that a condition of being employed by Vince that someone was going to have you sexually, consensual or not.
I have one suspicion, and it involves what I believe to be the darkest “rumor secret” in the annals of WWE.
That rumor (and I must stress – everything here is rumor and innuendo and NOTHING IS PROVEN) involves new CEO and Vince Jr.'s daughter Stephanie.
One of the darkest urban legends in all of professional wrestling involves Stephanie McMahon and a purported underage sexual relationship with the late “Macho Man” Randy Savage.
It is believed that Vince McMahon fired Savage for having sex with Stephanie in 1994 or 1995, when Stephanie was 14 years old.
I am going to go out on a limb. Everyone knows that Vince McMahon is a misogynistic Trumpian pig. So that, of it's own merit, does not, in any way, explain Friday's action (or why didn't this happen ten years ago?).
But what if one of the following scenarios occurred:
McMahon actually pimped his daughter to Stephanie, and Savage refused? We know that there was a boob job done for Stephanie during her Attitude Era/Alliance run in WWE, both babyface and heel.
What if, regardless of other Vince involvement, he's been covering up such an act for the last almost 30 years, and it's finally been found out?
And then the real dark one: What if Vince has been doing it to his daughter himself, like a good Trumpian bitch?
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