The Wall Street Journal Vince McMahon Thread.

[Curt McGirt]

1 minute ago, Andrew POE! said:

Honestly, at this point, let all of wrestling burn down.

You can say the same thing about any social structure or method of public participation at this point -- any and every sport, business, technological outgrowth, form of entertainment, religion, school, government, whatever. There are sick fucks like this living like termites in all of them. You can't trust anyone. My own best friend of 20 years turned out to be a predator and an abuser. That guy might as well have been my brother, but inside he was filth all along. 

But I gotta live with it. I cut the cancer out the best I can and move on, however pointless it all is. And I'm not gonna let go of the art forms I love because of the foul-ball fucks within them. I'm too angry to do that. They don't deserve to have their awfulness poison me out of enjoying the only things I have keeping me alive in this world. 

That's just how I feel, anyway. 

[piranesi]

I'm dragging myself here, not all of humanity. I 100% knew deep down it was this bad for literal decades. Same with the film industry "back in the golden years."

I feel guilty because I now know how bad someone has to be before I even care enough to just not keep watching for fun.

I feel guilty because I, and many other people, do this kind of thing all the time. Every single act of corporate, government, police, cruelty that happens at this point is because we let it slide for decades of "just do it or someone else will." SOmetimes something shakes you out of it for a second. So, sure, I'm going through that.

When I come down from this sick feeling maybe I'll like Bernard Shaw again or I'll watch some football or something and get back to "the way it just is." But I hope I at least retain enough of this to draw a few more lines.

Like I'm not looking for perfection here. The line I'm picturing isn't the line of perfection. I'm just looking for how low it goes before we just really aren't human beings anymore but machine parts in a machine run by the worst of us.

Edited January 26 by piranesi

[piranesi]

Okay I think I figured out how to word this. A lot of people in a lot of very big posh corporate offices and driving very nice cars are going to make a decision tomorrow. I know what I would do. None of those people will be ruined if they make the other decision. And if all of them make the right decision and some fortunes go goodbye maybe a lesson will be learned by a few more of those big shots (perverse sadistic preening motherfuckers) at the top.

Edited January 26 by piranesi

[Dog]

EDIT: You know what, never mind. Not worth it.

Edited January 26 by Dog

[zendragon]

3 hours ago, piranesi said:

The percentage of people who, when they attain even a shred of wealth and power over other people, proceed to become absolute vile animals at the first chance they get....is staggering.

I’ve been wondering which comes first? Was he like this them when he got the money he thought he could get away with it or does the money change someone into someone who thinks normal rules don’t apply?

[piranesi]

It’s either that on,y psychopaths become that rich and powerful because only a psychopath could do the things you have to do.

or that once you hit a certain level you go literally mad because everyone around starts treating you like a Pharaoh. 
 

Lesnar and Laurinitis for their part are just gluttonous savage pigs. 

[The Natural]

So I'm writing this as my thoughts come to my mind and lack of sleep so bear with me please. Lifelong fan of wrestling, WWE my favourite promotion. I got into this as a 5 year old kid and watched for 33 continuous years. I turn 39 in two months. I've come close to stopping through Chris Benoit double murder-suicide in June 2007. I'm always conscious of bringing Benoit up knowing what he's done and the affect that name always has on people especially the family friends of Nancy/Daniel. The other times are the most recent Vince McMahon stories. How can I watch something governed by this monster but I want to support the wrestlers still? The details in the Wall Street Journal article and the lawsuit are abhorrent. Fuck Vince McMahon, John Laurinitis and Brock Lesnar. It's got me thinking whether I can watch WWE, who knew/didnt know, those who did turn a blind eye or speak out but met with silence. I'll probably still watch WWE but am I a hypocrite for? Sorry if rambling, just wanted to get my thoughts out. Thanks for reading xxx.

Edited January 26 by The Natural

[AxB]

Saying Fuck WWE it needs to die, that’s a reasonable response. Saying Fuck Pro-Wrestling Kill the Business… Speaking Out was 3 and a half years ago. Pro Wrestling is a much less scummy business in 2024 than it was in 2019. I don’t see any way that Eddie Kingston could be considered complicit in what Vince does. Being so disgusted with Vince that you refuse to ever watch Katsuhiko Nakajima ever again? Nah. Vince is not, and never has been bigger than Wrestling. 

[piranesi]

You’re right. I mean I don’t think k there’s a covering law that determines how I’m gonna feel about every professional wrestler at every level. And I don’t know that there’s a covering law for how every fan at home should react. I’m not gonna judge anyone for watching. I’m just saying I can’t. 
 

Now I will judge people who are close enough to it to have a choice. At least in the sense that if say Roman Reigns quit tomorrow I would genuine;y respect him more and if he goes out there and cuts [romo and just rolls on, I will respect him less. Now if he quits and also accidentally causes injuries to some ecexcutives, I will subscribe to his patreon. 

[hammerva]

I hope this isn't true but the plan was to bring Brock in for the Rumble tomorrow.   I would like to say that would create an awful crowd situation but to be honest if Vince came out tonight like last year he would get a monster pop.  Like last year

[Matt D]

I don't necessarily feel like I have much constructive to add but I did wake up to 45 new posts and it does feel like it's getting a little chippy so I'll say a few things.

@piranesi is not judging anyone here but is, without question, serving as a baseline for one to judge him or herself. That's making people uncomfortable. It's making me a little uncomfortable. That's ok. This is horrific, highly disturbing stuff that is closely connected to someone and something that has been a part of our lives for most of our lives. With very few exceptions, most of us had our developmental upbringings affected by this company. Piranesi is reacting in a certain way, but that's a personal reaction and I'm glad this board is here so there's a safe place for that reaction.

There are power imbalances everywhere in life, but wrestling is uniquely set up for them. Even more so than movies, it's a carny industry built upon the notion of fooling and manipulating people, of milking the marks dry. It's built into the DNA. In some ways it's easier if you're watching old wrestling because there is a distance, but you always have to joust with Dick Murdoch's racism or Bill Watts' jingoism or Jerry Lawler's transgressions with his local power and parse that context as you are watching with a critical or just an observer's eye. But seeing it documented this way, in a period where the company should have been under so much scrutiny, during and after Speaking Out, and with the idea that it's only coming out because he didn't pay as much as he was supposed to...

Point being, everyone here will find their own acceptable levels and the rest of us will do our best to respect those decisions and support one another. And hopefully not try to convince one another how to feel in order to feel better ourselves. Even though that can be hard. But we're all in this together.

As for me, I moved in with my then 5 year old stepson in 2007, June 2007. I introduced him to TV shows, anime, comics, video games, books, but never, ever wrestling. I've considered showing one of the girls a TJPW match at some point, something like that, but no, never them either. I've probably missed out on a lot of rewarding moments because of it and I don't fault anyone for making different parental choices. But it was the choice I made. I am very fortunate that I have a challenging job, that I have a great family life. I produce a lot of wrestling content, but it's always a hobby. For the most part, I never chase clout and due to an ethics clause in my job, I can't chase cash through it. Over the last couple of years and the last decade in general I've seen a lot of my peers in wrestling fandom get closer and closer to the industry itself, whether just in communicating with a lot of wrestlers or being directly or indirectly connected to indy or larger promotions. I'm happy for them if they've found happiness in it, but personally, I do feel somewhat fortunate that it's just a hobby for me and I can draw stronger, firmer boundaries than some of my peers. Sometimes I feel a little left out, but I'm probably lucky for it all things considered.

I haven't give a cent of my own money to WWE since an NXT show many years ago. I haven't really felt the need to go back and watch much of anything from them for a couple of years. I had my own reasons for that and they were equally symbolic or thematic as moral, though with WWE it's always all about Vince's vision and his insecurities and will, so it's always tied together.  If I was actively looking forward to the Rumble, it'd be one thing, but I haven't even gone back for Punk's stuff, or Gunther's matches, or whatever. For me, the bandaid's already been pulled off when it comes to modern WWE. Though there are other, bigger bandaids of course.

Anyway, back to the point. Let's all be kind to each other here in the face of such horror.

Edited January 26 by Matt D

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

During my tenure in sports announcing, we had a big tournament. We selected our broadcast team, made the announcement, everyone was happy.

An hour later, a member of that broadcast team was credibly accused with sexual assault.

We called him into a meeting to hear what he could say about it, with the thought that we were going to remove him until everything regarding his accusal had been worked out through whatever method the victim chose to take. I still remember him saying "well, we had sex, but she said yes! That doesn't mean she can just take it back!" as my blood started to run cold and realizing he either didn't understand what he had done, or he knew exactly what he did and didn't care.

Either way, things became a lot more complicated. We fired him outright. We contacted and confirmed a replacement, notified the broadcast group and the participating teams, modified the announcement to remove his name and add the replacement. We reached out to the accuser to notify them of his removal, and offered support. We were going to make a formal statement, but it needed to be cleared by legal, and that was going to take three or four days. We'd done all we could do at that very moment.

I laid in bed at night wondering how many other people he'd hurt, because I'd hired him to do a few other tournaments, and I couldn't help but wonder how much I enabled this monster. There's no way I could've known, but at the same time, I was responsible for him being there. I had to accept some form of fault, right?

The next morning, exhausted emotionally and physically, I got out of bed and saw I had quite a few Twitter notifications. Someone prominent in our community sent a tweet, tagging me in it, saying that my silence was complicit. There were replies indicating that because there had been no statement, we were covering up a sexual assault.

It took everything I could to not lash out. As a sexual assault survivor myself, I resented the indication that I did nothing, or worse, was actively trying to cover it up. But at the same time, how could they have known what we were working on? We made a lot of changes behind the scenes and were stuck unable to make a formal statement until legal cleared it.

So I just responded that they should refresh the roster announcement, and that I still needed time to process understanding that someone I considered a friend was a monster.

It wasn't good enough, but it was all I could do. That and crying.

I say that to spare some thoughts to the people who work inside of WWE's machine. Maybe they knew. Maybe they didn't. Maybe they're working to try and fix things. Maybe they're just as blindsided and disgusted by this as we all are, but can't say anything.

We don't know. We may never know.

But I feel for the people who are doing the right things, or trying to and are stopped, and as a result are being grouped in with a monster.

We can say we're disgusted and we can cancel our subscriptions and we can stop supporting them - and we should - but we should also remember that there are people who deserve our understanding and did not commit Vince McMahon's crimes and don't deserve to be lumped in with his horrific choices.

That's all I ask.

[Andrew POE!]

7 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

You can say the same thing about any social structure or method of public participation at this point -- any and every sport, business, technological outgrowth, form of entertainment, religion, school, government, whatever. There are sick fucks like this living like termites in all of them. You can't trust anyone. My own best friend of 20 years turned out to be a predator and an abuser. That guy might as well have been my brother, but inside he was filth all along. 

But I gotta live with it. I cut the cancer out the best I can and move on, however pointless it all is. And I'm not gonna let go of the art forms I love because of the foul-ball fucks within them. I'm too angry to do that. They don't deserve to have their awfulness poison me out of enjoying the only things I have keeping me alive in this world. 

That's just how I feel, anyway. 

I understand what you are saying and I agree - it's just for me, it's easier not to watch wrestling or even follow it on the internet when news appear. Sadly though, I've still been keeping up with wrestling through YT videos and news articles I get on my phone. Some of the YT subscriptions fed me wrestling news as well. I went through and unsubscribed from them all now.

And while I'm lumping in people who very likely are just as disgusted as I am, I'm only lumping in people working in wrestling because they are trying to appeal to the person at the center of all of this. People who got released from WWE are working in TNA or AEW or NWA with the hopes of....capturing Vince McMahon's eye and going back to the WWE. People being trained at the Performance Center hope to appear on NXT then WWE with the hopes of capturing people like Vince McMahon's eye. Who knows what acts Vince McMahon expected of the male wrestlers to earn his favor once they got there or what he expected from the female wrestlers to be subjected to. He drug a woman through all kinds of hell and she wasn't even trying to get a job in the wrestling business; she just wanted a job somewhere.

What @Stefanie Sparkleface mentioned is very much likely as well; those in wrestling are just as blindsided as we are and can't control what Vince McMahon does. For every story of wrestlers working in a professional manner with Vince McMahon, there are stories of people like Brock Lesnar who didn't and participated in whatever sick shit Vince McMahon thought up. Who knows if there are others. It wasn't that long ago when male wrestlers would actually laugh and joke about sexually assaulting female fans with spiked drinks or giving them drugs.

Wrestling as a form of entertainment is part of the same entertainment bucket as MMA or boxing. A corrupt entertainment business where athletic prowess is displayed and it's easy to ignore save for a few events.

[Technico Support]

8 hours ago, piranesi said:

A lot of people in a lot of very big posh corporate offices and driving very nice cars are going to make a decision tomorrow. I know what I would do. None of those people will be ruined if they make the other decision. And if all of them make the right decision and some fortunes go goodbye maybe a lesson will be learned by a few more of those big shots (perverse sadistic preening motherfuckers) at the top.

Question is, are these people still close enough to their humanity to make moral decisions, or have they been so insulated by yes men and daily swims in hundred dollar bills that they've lost their moral compass?  I know where my hunch would fall on that question but I'm older and have had 49+ years of seeing what rich men do when left unchecked.

[Godfrey]

I've been trying to figure out to talk about how I feel without getting too political, I know nobody needs that right now. Sufficed to say whenever I read things like this it hits me twice, first when I think of the victim and what she went through, and again when I remember that it's not just her and it's not just Vince and that this level of terror is a systemic issue. So get organized and get active because the change we want rarely comes top down

[Loki]

3 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

Question is, are these people still close enough to their humanity to make moral decisions, or have they been so insulated by yes men and daily swims in hundred dollar bills that they've lost their moral compass?  I know where my hunch would fall on that question but I'm older and have had 49+ years of seeing what rich men do when left unchecked.

I think they'll make the right decision, but not for morality's sake. They'll make it for the sake of protecting their investment. It's like if someone bought the formula for a soft drink from Dr. Pepper and he turned out to be a criminal. They've got the recipe, they don't even need him anymore. 

[Technico Support]

7 minutes ago, Loki said:

I think they'll make the right decision, but not for morality's sake. They'll make it for the sake of protecting their investment. It's like if someone bought the formula for a soft drink from Dr. Pepper and he turned out to be a criminal. They've got the recipe, they don't even need him anymore. 

Right, I was just thinking about that.  Their choice will be in the middle of the Venn Diagram of "morally right" and "right for the company and our sacrosanct shareholders and the holy job creators amen."

Life is fucking HARD, man.  I try to be open and forgiving, gracious, understanding that everyone is fighting a personal war I'll never see and deserves some slack, but then so much happens to feed the cynicism, you know?

[Dolfan in NYC]

Should be noted that this Brad Shepherd idiot (probably wisely) deleted his Twitter account.  Then couldn't help himself and created a new account. 

It didn't go well for him:

 

Wonder if they're going to acknowledge this at all tonight.  I sincerely doubt it, but even a 15 second thing from Hunter would probably do a world of good for WWE and its fans.

 

[Loki]

3 minutes ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

Should be noted that this Brad Shepherd idiot (probably wisely) deleted his Twitter account.  Then couldn't help himself and created a new account. 

It didn't go well for him:

 

Wonder if they're going to acknowledge this at all tonight.  I sincerely doubt it, but even a 15 second thing from Hunter would probably do a world of good for WWE and its fans.

 

If they would say something, go all in and have the Rock do it. He's on the board of directors for a reason. 

[Leonidas]

Two things stand out to me in this story:

First, this was in 2020, this isn't "historical" abuse, this was wrinkly old dyed hair Vince. Imagine him during the attitude era and tell me there aren't a million other stories waiting to come out. 

Second, with the involvement of Laurinitis and other board members as well as potentially some well-known wrestlers too, this could be the unravelling of WWE. You have to think after working with him for 20+ years, a lot of people would know about this side of Vince. If HHH knew, so did HBK, If Taker knew, so did Michelle, if Cena knew, so did Nikki, if Nikki knew, so did Brie, if Brie knew, so did Bryan. (And that's without the whole Laurinitis-Bellas connection) This thing snowballs out massively and would literally take decades to explore fully.

[hammerva]

By the way on a side note (hopefully it hasn't been brought earlier on here),  Chris Jericho needs to stay the fuck out of this conversation.  There is glass in death matches that are stronger than the glass in his house when it comes to this

 

[Infinit]

AEW Punk made a good point here. How deep is the rot of Vince's culture in the company?

 

[Zakk_Sabbath]

"Who knew what" is kind of a shitty game to play here because the thing about these kinds of abusers is that they're really good at hiding things and endearing themselves to non-would-be-victims specifically so it seems like a crazy idea that they would be capable of such crimes.

Edited January 26 by Zakk_Sabbath

[Dolfan in NYC]

8 minutes ago, Zakk_Sabbath said:

"Who knew what" is kind of a shitty game to play here because the thing about these kinds of abusers is that they're really good at hiding things and endearing themselves to non-would-be-victims specifically so it seems like a crazy idea that they would be capable of such crimes.

Not to mention the fact that Vince has been shown *multiple times over* to be the type to retaliate against anyone who steps out of line. 

It's really tough to maintain your principles when you're a tech being shown a picture by the insane billionaire boss of the company, and you really need this job.  Not saying there's not a right or wrong here, but there were probably a bunch of people who needed to make some very difficult choices. 

Ugh, just a horrible story and I really, really hope she gets the justice she deserves.

[Curt McGirt]

11 minutes ago, Infinit said:

AEW Punk made a good point here. How deep is the rot of Vince's culture in the company?

 

...and yet Punk is back (and Jade is there too probably -- at least for now). I don't get it.