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Vince McMahon Returns to WWE


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Yeah, part of me thinks he just goes full supervillain and comes out Monday for Raw XXX saying that everyone in the crowd is his real family and he raised all of them (us) and created their modern mythology and taught them right from wrong more so than their parents over the last four decades. I mean, that's the play, right? Who needs Steph.

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2 minutes ago, Matt D said:

Yeah, part of me thinks he just goes full supervillain and comes out Monday for Raw XXX saying that everyone in the crowd is his real family and he raised all of them (us) and created their modern mythology and taught them right from wrong more so than their parents over the last four decades. I mean, that's the play, right? Who needs Steph.

That or he comes out in Saudi garb looking like Scandar Akbar. 

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7 minutes ago, Red King said:

Nick Khan is on Bill Simmons podcast today if anyone is interested.

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43 minutes ago, Red King said:

It was proven to be BS a week ago. I don’t see how this is “news” 

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1 hour ago, supremebve said:

Nick Khan is on Bill Simmons podcast today if anyone is interested.

Vince could still end up working for WWE post sale. 

ESPN was brought up by Nick for possibly getting WWE's media rights.

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1 hour ago, LF2 said:

It was proven to be BS a week ago. I don’t see how this is “news” 

A sale already being done was B.S. If Khan wants to claim the Saudis are not in the running at all, that's bold, and I'm not sure anyone should believe that. 

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I am listening to this now and will share some thoughts later. But Nick is the CEO of a publicly traded company that is in the sales process. For anything that can tangibly affect the value of the company and shareholders, he has to be incredibly careful and factual about what he says. He cannot lie about something involving the sale of a company without putting himself into a lot of trouble.

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So in terms of how these types of interviews go: 

1) Nick and Bill Simmons know each other and have some kind of friendship. The WWE and The Ringer (owned by Spotify) have a partnership together. So this was not going to be a hard-hitting conversation, and why Nick did the interview. The Ringer obviously has independence from the WWE, but Nick is going to do an interview where he will not get in any trouble. And I am really certain Vince had to clear him doing the interview first. The whole point of this interview is to sooth investors and let them know the WWE is a steady ship. (Hahaha.) Investors have boosted the stock price so far, but the worst thing a company can do is to not look steady.

2) It is highly likely that Bill’s question or at least his primary talking points were given to Nick ahead of time. Almost any interview involving a host and a celebrity is — late night TV, Barbara Walters, etc. 

You know those interviews on CNBC with money people talking about why they like certain stocks? I worked in PR for financial companies for a few years. We would get a client on CNBC or Fox Business. I would talk with the client about what they wanted to talk about for their appearance. Then I would write the suggested questions with the client’s answers and send them to the producer of the segment. The producer would give them to the host. And 90 percent of the time, the host would ask the questions I wrote. 

So between the rules of a publicly traded company, the shared interests of the companies and just in general how this stuff works — the interview was a “work” if you will in that they both went in on the same page.

I could be wrong and this may have been a completely impromptu interview but…

3) That said -/ it was not a full softball. Bill did ask a few tough questions about all of the issues that have happened, the succession plan, etc. Nick have some insightful answers that he thought threw ahead of time. 

4) Bill did not ask some questions he should have - “If things are so good right now, why did the board tell Vince it wanted no part of him coming back?” or “Are you worried about the looming SEC investigation?” and about the recent lawsuits and a bunch more. He wasn’t going to since he is not a financial reporter and not a journalist anymore (and even when he was, he was a column writer and something else entirely) and because of the relationships. 

5) None of the talk about Disney was an accident. For those that do not know - Disney is also having its own backstage drama. Their CEO is Bob Iger. He was iconic among CEO types and in Wall Street and etc. He retired but never really left. His successor sorta sucked and the looming presence of the old boss did not do him any favors. So the board put Iger back in place as CEO a few weeks ago. 

My theory was they wanted to talk Iger up as much as possible to make it feel like Disney was a viable bidder for the company. A new CEO in an uncertain economy would usually signal that an acquisition would not be coming for a while. One of the things in the interview was them talking about how good a job Iger had been doing with ESPN since his return. He’s been back for off the top of my head three months. He has not done anything to revamp ESPN yet. 

6) It felt like the talk about TK was a “stay in your lane” moment as he kept on calling him “the kid” and went out of his way to talk about how impressive his dad was (and he is.) And the “it’s easy to run a company that does not make money if you can keep getting your dad to pay for it” line was very dismissive but also incredibly true. Grubhub really did a lot of damage to the restaurant industry and Uber/Lyft did the same to taxis and Netflix did to traditional TV by being companies that did not make money but constantly getting people to invest in the company in hopes they would be profitable. 

We have no idea if AEW makes money. Tony can literally say anything he wants about how much revenue they make or their finances. If and when they get a new TV deal, it would likely be with a publicly traded company who would probably let the terms be known in a press release or word would leak. But as of now - take anything TK says about AEW’s finances with a big grain of salt. There is no way to know because it’s a company he owns and he does not have to tell anyone anything and he can be fully dishonest if he wants.

I also do not think the WWE’s hierarchy cares about AEW or is threatened by them at all. Why would you even care? AEW might have her buzz of us nerds… and WWE still made nine figures in profit last year. 

 But the whole AEW conversation basically felt a lot like Nick telling TK to shut the f up and they were not going to sell to them.

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31 minutes ago, Greggulator said:

5) None of the talk about Disney was an accident. For those that do not know - Disney is also having its own backstage drama. Their CEO is Bob Iger. He was iconic among CEO types and in Wall Street and etc. He retired but never really left. His successor sorta sucked and the looming presence of the old boss did not do him any favors. So the board put Iger back in place as CEO a few weeks ago. 

My theory was they wanted to talk Iger up as much as possible to make it feel like Disney was a viable bidder for the company. A new CEO in an uncertain economy would usually signal that an acquisition would not be coming for a while. One of the things in the interview was them talking about how good a job Iger had been doing with ESPN since his return. He’s been back for off the top of my head three months. He has not done anything to revamp ESPN yet. 

Yep, I feel like if Disney was viable we would already know if they're interested or not. If WWE's whole model is centered around family entertainment, "creating moments and memories", being able to script buzzer beaters (lol), and the fact they have enough content to hold someone over for several decades plus would make all the sense in the world for them to be on Disney's radar. I don't think they are...at least to the point where they are willing buy it for several billion dollars.

37 minutes ago, Greggulator said:

6) It felt like the talk about TK was a “stay in your lane” moment as he kept on calling him “the kid” and went out of his way to talk about how impressive his dad was (and he is.) And the “it’s easy to run a company that does not make money if you can keep getting your dad to pay for it” line was very dismissive but also incredibly true. Grubhub really did a lot of damage to the restaurant industry and Uber/Lyft did the same to taxis and Netflix did to traditional TV by being companies that did not make money but constantly getting people to invest in the company in hopes they would be profitable. 

We have no idea if AEW makes money. Tony can literally say anything he wants about how much revenue they make or their finances. If and when they get a new TV deal, it would likely be with a publicly traded company who would probably let the terms be known in a press release or word would leak. But as of now - take anything TK says about AEW’s finances with a big grain of salt. There is no way to know because it’s a company he owns and he does not have to tell anyone anything and he can be fully dishonest if he wants.

I also do not think the WWE’s hierarchy cares about AEW or is threatened by them at all. Why would you even care? AEW might have her buzz of us nerds… and WWE still made nine figures in profit last year. 

 But the whole AEW conversation basically felt a lot like Nick telling TK to shut the f up and they were not going to sell to them.

Correct me if I am wrong on this...doesn't a lot of this feel unwarranted? What is the whole genesis of why TK needs to stay in his lane? And I could have sworn we already had one of these moments around the time Nick Khan came aboard. If they're not competition, why is there so much discussion around AEW? Can you just not ignore them? I mean that was Vince's whole M.O. once they started to gain the advantage in the MNW even you had one or two jabs directed at WCW every now and again. Once WWF got red hot and WCW was a coffin on rollerskates, the only thing that existed in the WWF universe was WWF. I think Tony Khan might have gotten under their skin in a particular way that no other competitor has since WCW died. 

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There is a huge difference between being bought by Disney or Comcast (NBCUniversal) if you are a media company. It is an entirely different thing to be bought by a billionaire and partners so his son can have a toy (even a profitable one.) That and an anonymous source (obviously TK) telling CNBC Vince can have a job working for them and then making some comments about it to a no-name website makes me think they are telling TK in their own way “we can put you out of business if we want to unless your dad wants to give you tens of millions.” I do not think TK is under their skin as a competitor (he’s not) but they look at him as a clown and if he’s going to comment on their business they’ll remind everyone his dad bought him a toy and he hasn’t really done him anything yet.

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13 hours ago, Greggulator said:

There is a huge difference between being bought by Disney or Comcast (NBCUniversal) if you are a media company. It is an entirely different thing to be bought by a billionaire and partners so his son can have a toy (even a profitable one.) 

How is it going to be his toy though? Is he not a wrestling promoter just like Vince? Was WCW not Vince's toy when he bought it for pennies on the dollar and was forced to abort one of the worst booked storylines in wrestling history (got to be top 5 based on how it was botched and the amount of money they lost on it potentially) using WCW's good name? What about WWECW which was also screwed up royally and gave us perhaps the most critically panned PPV (also a huge commercial disaster IIRC) ever put on by WWF/E in their long and illustrious history? Was that not toy like behavior? What about Black Saturday? What about buying Stampede and not paying Stu Hart? What about trying to buy AAA in 1997/1998 w/ a limited knowledge of lucha libre because WCW was kicking their ass in terms of innovating how they used international stars? What about Fake Razor and Fake Diesel? This is the very definition of pot kettle black.

13 hours ago, Greggulator said:

Vince can have a job working for them and then making some comments about it to a no-name website makes me think they are telling TK in their own way “we can put you out of business if we want to unless your dad wants to give you tens of millions.” 

...Well they cannot. They couldn't even get more viewers on Wednesday night. They lost that round...bad. To the point they had to admit it essentially and rebrand NXT. Hell, if Impact is still chugging along, odds are they couldn't even make a dent in putting AEW out of business. At this point in wrestling, the only way a company is going out of business is their own self destruction.

13 hours ago, Greggulator said:

 I do not think TK is under their skin as a competitor (he’s not) but they look at him as a clown and if he’s going to comment on their business they’ll remind everyone his dad bought him a toy and he hasn’t really done him anything yet.

I think he very much is. Either that or Nick doesn't know the company motto is "everything is our competition" and "competition is good" that Paul Levesque has been trotting out since AEW has been a thing on conference calls. 

Moreover, it's not like Nick Khan got to WWE when they were struggling. Taking nothing away from the business prowess and Nick's past success, the WWE was very successful when he got there and will be very successful when his ass eventually moves on. Same with Paul, and I have nothing against him either. They didn't start this race the same distance from the finish line. They are doing this off the work of Vince McMahon and the blood, sweat, and tears of all the people in creative and the talent past and present. This didn't start from the ground up. TK for all his faults managed to do something that no one has done in 20+ years and do solid arena, TV, and PPV business for a company in wrestling that wasn't WWF/E. You think Nick Khan is going start his version of Game Changer Wrestling once his WWE run is over? I doubt it. 

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I'm honestly shocked that Nick basically said, "If you thought Vince wasn't coming back, you're a dummy." All but admitted he just bowed out to temporarily take the heat off himself, while saying not that many people actually care about the horrible shit Vince has done. Talk about saying the quiet part loud.

Edited by Dog
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It's not like Vince wasn't gifted a pro-wrestling promotion by his dad, too. Yes, he may have had to buy out Gorilla & co., but I believe the notion that he paid his dying father for the family business, gifted to Vincent J. by his father, has been debunked.

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28 minutes ago, Goitre said:

It's not like Vince wasn't gifted a pro-wrestling promotion by his dad, too. Yes, he may have had to buy out Gorilla & co., but I believe the notion that he paid his dying father for the family business, gifted to Vincent J. by his father, has been debunked.

Even if he wasn't gifted, the legacy still exists. If Vince was just some guy from North Carolina without his parentage, he is basically a broke guy with a very good vision. Hell, he could have been Joel and Erik Watts and never gotten that opportunity cause his daddy sold the business to someone else.

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9 hours ago, Greggulator said:

None of the talk about Disney was an accident.

This stood out to me as well. It's one thing to bring up disney,  it's another to pretty much give Simmons his entire sales pitch to Disney. There was way too much information about their subscriber base,  how it crosses over with their existing customer base and how advantageous it would be to have WWE on their platform for it to be idle conversation. There amount of specific information he gave about Disney makes me think they're the #1 seed in this imaginary tournament I just made up. It's clear they have done research specific to Disney which isn't surprising,  but putting that information into this conversation was surprising. As you outlined in your response,  Khan knows Simmons and he did a pretty good job of answering 55% of every question. He gave just enough information where a followup would feel pushy and disrupt their genial conversation for pretty much every question and then gets super specific about Disney. As someone who considers himself pretty media savvy,  that went off like a siren in my mind. 

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Hold up, isn’t the story on AEW’s creation that Tony took the startup money from his own inheritance fund? And Shad told him it was a bad idea? I realize this is maybe splitting hairs (and, oh, what a life, to have a multi-million dollar inheritance fund to borrow from), but that’s a very different thing from Shad just cutting Tony a check because he wanted something. He was essentially borrowing from his future self, so there actually was an element of personal risk for him. (Although, admittedly, the “risk” would be, like, having one less super yacht.)

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