The Wall Street Journal Vince McMahon Thread.

[Infinit]

Lance Storm saying what we are all feeling

 

[The Natural]

4 minutes ago, Infinit said:

Lance Storm saying what we are all feeling

 

Well said.

[Robert S]

1 hour ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

(...)

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. 

(...)

Now would be the time for those people to stand up and at the very least testify in court. TKO would have to be really, really stupid to fire someone in this scenario. Disregarding the potential law suits, imagine the press they would get.

[The Natural]

Speaking of well said, the DVDVR MB board's reaction. Love you xxx.

Edited January 26 by The Natural

[Kevin Wilson]

Finally on the front page of ESPN, anyone's guess how long it lasts. I don't watch their talking head shows so don't know if its been mentioned on-air.

[The Natural]

UK:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68104198

https://news.sky.com/story/ex-wwe-boss-vince-mcmahon-accused-of-sexual-misconduct-and-sex-trafficking-13056606

[EVA]

I realize this might not be fair, and my brain is so broken by society that I may not even be able to hold to his, but…Right now, I feel like I’m going to have a difficult time respecting anyone who performs at the Royal Rumble, ever again. If they’re as outraged as we are (and they rightly should be), they actually have a tremendous amount of leverage to get something done in this moment. If the roster came together and said, “This is heinous, and nobody’s walking through that curtain until Vince is gone and a serious investigation into this is started,” you can bet your ass TKO would find a way to get Vince out the door by bell time. IMO any other act is a tacit admission that you’re a self-interested dirtbag who doesn’t care that the yield of your labor enables horrific shit to happen, so long as your check arrives on time.

Of course, I’m sure the wrestlers will use the fans as a shield. We don’t want to disappoint the fans. The fans already paid to see the show. Etc. But that’s all self-serving bullshit. The fans can get a refund. Card subject to change, motherfuckers.

[jaedmc]

My gut reaction is to feel like that. But I try to take a breath and be understanding. Not everyone has the strength, you know?

BUT

This thought goes through my head:

Imagine fighting a guy over using real glass in a match you're not in and threatening to walk out of the biggest show in the company's history. Then you leave and work for people you've called bootlickers and embarrassing humans. Then this happens. What do you do?

I'd give anything for Punk to be the guy he wants us all to think he is.

[Sublime]

This whole situation is terrible and we know it’s just one story about Vince and that there are others. And this all makes you look at the Patterson allegations and you have to know that this behavior is baked into this company and was always there.Kamala had that song he made like a decade ago, that was literally about how you could get a push if you did sexual favors back in the 80s. This shit has been happening all along and I feel like an idiot for sticking with it for as long as I did. I don’t think there’s any way I could ever watch WWE again, I haven’t in a long time and wish I had stopped sooner. But this company needs to be burnt to the ground, everything related to the McMahon era, the whole history of WWE/WWF should be done with, clean house and rebrand the company. TKO wrestling or whatever. I still won’t watch but Vince needs his “legacy” erased.

 

[Technico Support]

36 minutes ago, jaedmc said:

Imagine fighting a guy over using real glass in a match you're not in and threatening to walk out of the biggest show in the company's history. Then you leave and work for people you've called bootlickers and embarrassing humans. Then this happens. What do you do?

I'd give anything for Punk to be the guy he wants us all to think he is.

That would be nice, and I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong, but if he had any character, he wouldn't have gone back to "the place that made him sick" in the first place. 

[Technico Support]

20 minutes ago, Sublime said:

But this company needs to be burnt to the ground, everything related to the McMahon era, the whole history of WWE/WWF should be done with, clean house and rebrand the company. TKO wrestling or whatever. I still won’t watch but Vince needs his “legacy” erased.

 

That's probably what should happen, but it won't.  Not another peep from TKO all day.  Most likely because they're holed up in a conference room strategizing how to get rid of Vince, minimize damage, and move forward keeping as much value in this brand as they can.  Their initial Tweet of "all this shit happened before us, sorry" is a preview for how they're going to play this.  If you want to be REALLY cynical, everybody but Vince stays and Vince is scapegoated.  "It's time to put it all behind us and heal" type shit.  Nobody is skipping the Rumble.  I'm sure every wrestler in that company is telling themselves it was all Vince and now he's gone, so everything is fine.

Edited January 26 by Technico Support

[Cobra Commander]

feels like we still have 3-4 more hours for a proper Friday newsdump

(okay maybe 'dump' is a bad word to use here)

[mystman]

7 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

That would be nice, and I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong, but if he had any character, he wouldn't have gone back to "the place that made him sick" in the first place. 

I'll be honest, he'll be there wearing a "Believe All Women " shirt or something and think that's all he needs to do. But I'll be far more disappointed if AJ Lee shows up 

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

It's just so simple! Breach your contract in protest! The media will surely shame TKO into treating everyone better and nobody will ever be retaliated against!

No they won't. The media doesn't care. How many years have there been scuzzy stories about wrestling, and most of them are tantamount to 1) hey, those scuzzy dudes are scuzzy again or 2) those fakers are fake! This is just another story for them that they'll report for two or three days, but it's the circus in town and they literally don't care.

This is going to take either years and years of systemic change (which starts with a willingness to change, which seemed like it was going to happen in 2022 until Vince power played himself back in), or literally the entire company's going to have to walk out. And that's the other kicker; everyone on the roster may disagree, but the performer's drug inside of them may not let them because of the twisted belief that they don't want to let the fans down.

But of course, there will be people who blame the talent for getting locked up in a contract for years on end with literally no way out on their end and no other discernible skills other than putting on the performance of a fight. The machine has taken advantage of these people for decades, and it's very idealistic to say that they should throw themselves at the mercy of the employer who will 100% retaliate against them and just not put on a show.

I'm just saying I feel bad for the people who are in a no-win situation through no fault of their own, because they're the ones who are going to get hit the worst on this, not... y'know... the human trafficker/rapist/sexual abuser(s).

[odessasteps]

19 minutes ago, Cobra Commander said:

feels like we still have 3-4 more hours for a proper Friday newsdump

(okay maybe 'dump' is a bad word to use here)

Given this such a serious issue, there are so many absurd aspects of the story we aren't discussing and/or mocking. 

[Dog]

7 hours ago, Matt D said:

 

@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.

He's judging particular journalists and, by extension (and his own admission), the very act of journalism. Which is especially fucked up when, if it weren't for the Wall Street Journal's persistence on this story, we might not know about any of it. To Stefanie's point, most "legit" news outlets think wrestling is silly and not worth covering, even when there's something real there. The WSJ journalists probably had major pushback from their editors for pursuing any of this. Let's be thankful they and people like them continue to do their jobs, and not get mad at them for doing them or being compensated for doing so.

[Hamhock]

Yeah, a roster-related protest would have to involve everyone to be effective/avoid retaliation. For example (and this would never happen), the women's Rumble contestants all go to the ring at their appointed time slots, only no one gets eliminated when they were supposed to, and once all 30 are in the ring they all simultaneously exit over the top rope and the match ends with an empty ring.

Edited January 26 by Hamhock

[Greggulator]

This whole thing is at a different level than just “normal” sexual harassment due to power imbalances — a CEO promising a woman a job and promotions in exchange for sexual favors. That’s really bad on its own. And Vince’s story was really bad from a “basic financial law” POV when you consider that the hush money came from the company checkbook instead of his own. Because that’s just pure greed at that point. 

But this is alleging sexual slavery. It really is. The excrement component is terrible but kind of overlooked is the part where Vince was hitting her during “roleplay.” 

Also: It’s not like you go from “using the power imbalance to prey on women who work for me” to “shitting on a woman’s head during a threesome” without some really gross progression of that along the way. Like… how does Vince approach his personal trainer or John Laurinitis and ask them if they want to do what’s in the lawsuit without it happening before? 
 

Especially since Vince is in his 70s. I think it’s really likely that more stuff comes out from other women. The only reason it hasn’t is because you absolutely cannot blame anyone who does not want their name out there for whatever awful things Vince did. 

The woman who filed the lawsuit is beyond brave. She attached her name in a lawsuit where she revealed the most possible degrading things. 

All of this is just insane.

[Cobra Commander]

the grossest* part of the story being in May 2020 also makes me think "how much did Vince having the structure of his professional life upended end up with him making a bunch of decisions that awful people would tend to make" (did I word that right? Not saying the situation in 2020 caused that, but that the changes opened the door for him to potentially be even worse than he had been before)

Of course, I think parts of the lawsuit include events in 2021, so it's not exactly a thing where he corrected himself once things got a little more 'normal'. But bad people with more free time can lead to bad results

If the lawsuit details hold up, Vince could have openly advocated for letting everybody get Covid to build herd immunity in 2020 and that would have been far from the worst thing he did in 2020

(* - if that story wasn't the grossest part of the lawsuit, please don't let me in on what was)

Edited January 26 by Cobra Commander

[SirSmUgly]

These folks can't even agree to unionize. I don't think it's in the mentality of the type of person who goes into pro wrestling that they should even consider banding together for any reason, so if they can't band together to get the company to cover all of their travel costs, they're not going to do it to demand that the guy who comes off like a fatherly, charismatic pro wrestling genius to them is booted from TKO. 

[EVA]

19 minutes ago, Stefanie Sparkleface said:

it's very idealistic to say that they should throw themselves at the mercy of the employer who will 100% retaliate against them and just not put on a show.

 

I guarantee you TKO is not going to just not put on the show.

[Greggulator]

I have said it before — the Wall Street Journal has had arguably their best reporter working on the WWE story. The guy won the Pulitzer for breaking all of the Trump/Stormy Daniels news. The editors aren’t pushing back on writing about a company that just scored a $5 billion deal with Netflix.

[Cobra Commander]

NewsCorp has owned the Wall Street Journal for over 15 years, and fortunately the concerns about what could have happened haven't exactly happened. I'm sure there have been some decay in standards but the WSJ hasn't become the New York Post

Life would be a little less complex for some people in various business fields if the WSJ had been bungled in the last 15 years

[Dog]

Thank you for your continued contributions on these matters, @Greggulator.

[Technico Support]

25 minutes ago, Greggulator said:

This whole thing is at a different level than just “normal” sexual harassment due to power imbalances — a CEO promising a woman a job and promotions in exchange for sexual favors. That’s really bad on its own.

Are we at a point yet where we can just call using power imbalances to coerce sex "rape?" 

Hold a gun to a woman's head to get something she wasn't willing to give you voluntarily

vs

Hold her livelood, career, and financial well being to her head to get something she wasn't willing to give you voluntarily. 

Not the same but, god damn, it's close enough. 

Edited January 26 by Technico Support