The Wall Street Journal Vince McMahon Thread.

[Octopus]

Wait, do we know if HHH can read? Maybe we’re jumping to conclusions.

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

Just now, Octopus said:

Wait, do we know if HHH can read? Maybe we’re jumping to conclusions.

Those cheater glasses are just for show.

[Octopus]

1 minute ago, Stefanie Sparkleface said:

Those cheater glasses are just for show.

When he says it’s time to play the Game it’s likely not a sudoku or a word puzzle.

[Mister TV]

44 minutes ago, Stefanie Sparkleface said:

Pretty much this. I think what people forget when they do a lot of the "what if the territories had survived" scenarios is that a lot of those territories were doomed anyway, and WWF hastened their demise.

Take Black Saturday, for example. Georgia was buckling under the weight of trying to expand too quickly and the Briscoes wanted to get out anyway. If it wasn't going to be sold to Vince, it would have been sold to someone else.

Watts? Watts crashes in 1986/1987 anyway; nothing stops the oil prices from falling and his territory from cratering. If anything, Turner's demand that someone run a studio show in Atlanta might spread Watts' territory out and buy him a little bit of time, but he still ends up going under if his home base is still the Mid-South area.

Crockett probably crashes even faster than he did if he buys Georgia in 1984 instead of buying the slot from Vince, because then he tries to expand sooner than he did, and his staff wasn't capable of managing it. The question is really if Turner would be more willing to buy Crockett in, say, 1985/1986 rather than 1988.

The AWA still dies because Verne Gagne's problem wasn't Vince, his problem was his refusal to change with the times. He had Hogan when Hogan was red hot and wouldn't put his belt on him because he wanted a cut of Hogan's Japan dates, which forced Hogan out. Then he got gift-wrapped Sgt. Slaughter, who was almost as hot as Hogan at the time, and squandered Slaughter.

World Class still has the problem with the Von Erichs having their issues, and the territory becoming stale even if they do survive.

If Turner somehow stays in the wrestling business and if the situation described by Mister TV doesn't kill most of the groups, then whoever lands on Turner and survives in the mid-1990s still likely gets cancelled in 2001 when Jamie Kellner restructures TBS and TNT's programming. People say it's WCW's financials that got them cancelled, but both channels got rebranded around the same time WCW got dropped. It was clear that the merged AOL Time Warner wanted to change their programming and WCW's financials were an easy out for them. It stands to reason that no matter how healthy WCW was, or whoever was in their spot, they don't survive 2001.

This isn't to say that Vince was a genius or anything, but he was incredibly lucky and often in the right place at the right time. So assuming there's no WWF national expansion, eventually someone will end up trying (likely pushed by Turner as cable expands) and practically everyone ends up crashing due to their already extant problems.

The oil bust wasn’t the biggest issue Watts had with his expansion, he was buying tv time in markets he wasn’t running house shows in, he pissed away tons of money doing that, then Crockett did the same after he bought Watts out. 
 

Vince had a huge advantage over the other promoters when it came to expanding, he had consistent money rolling in from running shows at NBA/NHL arenas in NYC, Boston, Philly, Pittsburgh, DC, Long Island, and Northern New Jersey, plus towns like Baltimore and Providence that had buildings the same size the marquee arenas of other promotions. 
 

[Teflon Turtle]

The more I think about it, I’m not sure that Triple H is one of the “Corporate Officials” alluded to in the legal document.

But, I can’t shake from my head the idea that there’s a non-zero chance that Triple H hasn’t read the complaint because he already knows what’s in it. And not even because he was directly involved. But…I’m supposed to believe that an investigation was done into the payments Vince made, but that his kids and son-in-law have no idea as to the specifics of why the payments were made in the first place?
 

Hindsight is 20/20, but given the stuff Vince put on TV over the years, I’m also having trouble believing he’d be able to keep secrets if he was called out on the particulars of why it was so important to use millions in company funds in order to keep women silent about their affairs with him.

[S.K.o.S.]

1 hour ago, Go2Sleep said:

Edit: Also, I'm not enough of a sicko to watch the press conference, but did anyone ask about Lesnar?

No. Or at least, no one asked HHH about him.

[zendragon]

3 hours ago, The Great ML said:

By 1980, LA was dead.

It’s why Vince grabbed it first

[GuerrillaMonsoon]

50 minutes ago, Teflon Turtle said:

The more I think about it, I’m not sure that Triple H is one of the “Corporate Officials” alluded to in the legal document.

But, I can’t shake from my head the idea that there’s a non-zero chance that Triple H hasn’t read the complaint because he already knows what’s in it. And not even because he was directly involved. But…I’m supposed to believe that an investigation was done into the payments Vince made, but that his kids and son-in-law have no idea as to the specifics of why the payments were made in the first place?
 

Hindsight is 20/20, but given the stuff Vince put on TV over the years, I’m also having trouble believing he’d be able to keep secrets if he was called out on the particulars of why it was so important to use millions in company funds in order to keep women silent about their affairs with him.

I think if there was any possibility that he was: a) the document would go to painstaking lengths to identify him a lot more clearly (as they did with Lesnar), and b) if there was any scuttlebutt of that, media outlets would be running with that story that a current executive is heavily implicated to be involved in it.

[Shartnado]

6 hours ago, Technico Support said:

 “treat Vince like Kim Jong Il”

I gleefully add Vince to the current two person list who'd I'd love to see treated like Ghadaffi, instead.

[John from Cincinnati]

 

[AxB]

Asking “What happens if Vince never goes National?” does depend on if the supposition is “What if Vince keeps the WWWF as a regional promotion?” or “What if Vince falls into Snake River Canyon in 1974 and dies?”. 
 

Because all of a sudden “Hogan leaves the AWA” goes down a lot differently, and so does everything subsequent to that.

[The Natural]

It’s hopefully going to be Hell in a Cell for Vince McMahon.

[The Natural]

Dave Meltzer:

Regarding the press conference last night, It kind of boggles the mind that Paul Levesque was prepared so poorly for the questions. While he couldn't have said much, he could have at least said some things. Talking about a week where the company has gotten its most mainstream news and most negative news, and clearly had aged Paul himself greatly, as a great week was a very poor choice of words.

Obviously there was little he could say, but the idea of saying that he found out the same time we did or that he didn't read the lawsuit, the reality is he was on the Board of Directors, he knew about this in 2022 months before the Wall Street Journal. Is it possible he didn't know the details were as sordid as the lawsuit, yes. But as a major executive in a company that was sued, the idea he didn't read it would either indicate being oblivious to a major news story involving the company or a dishonest answer. I don't know which one it was. But the people who advised him did a horrible job. I'm guessing Cody Rhodes, who was asked a similar question and handled it better, probably wasn't advised either but he's not an executive.

I also think that it's very important to not turn this story into Paul Levesque (nor to ignore Paul Levesque or wonder who knows what). Ultimately this is a story about Vince McMahon, John Laurinaitis, and the culture stemming from the top at WWE that has been there for a long time. The problem is it came from the top, Vince McMahon, so even if many had knowledge and obviously many did, acting like they could have changed it is being naive. 

Vince isn't coming back, but we do have to look at the top of TKO, and that's not Levesque or even Nick Khan, but it is Ari Emanuel who made the decision to keep him in the company after so much had already come out and those on the Board who did a investigation and never interviewed Janel Grant, who was the person whose story ultimately started the ball rolling to uncover multiple payoffs. I don't think Levesque was hung out to dry on purpose, nor is this a defense of him, but once they decided to do the press conference, he needed to be prepped on what to say and they failed him badly.

Regarding the Rumble show last night, the biggest news involving Mania is that Roman Reigns vs. Cody Rhodes is the planned main event. Reigns vs. The Rock is still on the boards but for later, as long as Rock is open to doing it. All of the expected matches going in (Iyo Sky vs. Bayley, Rhea Ripley vs. Becky Lynch, Seth Rollins vs. CM Punk is still there. There were a number of changes made for Mania in the last few days. The way it was explained to me is that it involves the creative plans for Brock Lesnar and a domino effect when the decision was made at the last minute to not have Lesnar on the show due to the lawsuit.

Lesnar's planned creative last night was filled by Bron Breakker. Pretty much his point of entry, eliminations and how he was eliminated were all planned for Lesnar. The Lesnar creative which at this point he's not going to be involved with unless they decide they would bring him back, was Lesnar vs. Dominik Mysterio in Australia and Lesnar vs. Gunther (I don't know factually an IC title match but one would expect) at WrestleMania. Whether Bron Breakker gets those matches is not clear yet.

[Curt McGirt]

Well just because Bron replaced him for the Rumble doesn't mean he's gonna take his matches going forward anyway, I think that sounds silly. Saw that Lesnar/Dom rumor on FB last night and waited to hear it here before saying anything. That sounds... interesting. Everyone clearly thinks a lot of Dom even if it would be a total ass-stomp. 

[Zakk_Sabbath]

30 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

Well just because Bron replaced him for the Rumble doesn't mean he's gonna take his matches going forward anyway, I think that sounds silly. Saw that Lesnar/Dom rumor on FB last night and waited to hear it here before saying anything. That sounds... interesting. Everyone clearly thinks a lot of Dom even if it would be a total ass-stomp. 

I haven't seen any of him in the ring because I don't watch the show, obviously, but months ago someone here posted a recap of the Dom/Ripley story (including a hilarious 'Christmas dinner' scene and another in a restaurant where Rey is EATING DINNER IN THE MASK in both, which is tremendous) and Dom seemed like a total natural on-camera, with some really great lines. Great chemistry with Ripley, too (who has come super far since I last saw her, probably early in her NXT run if not prior)

[JohnnyJ]

A lot of this feels like dejavu because some semblance of the allegations have been floating around for some time. Generally speaking it is difficult to gauge how much people knew and when. Over the years there have been hundreds of hundreds of people who have a bone to pick with Vince. There's also a small economy built around wrestling workplace gossip. Yet there was surprisingly little scuttlebutt regarding the grosser side of how he was conducting himself. This would lead me to believe that only his inner circle really knew what he was up to. 

But then the question becomes who was in his inner circle. Given how Hunter has positioned himself in the company over the last almost thirty years it is almost impossible to believe he hasn't seen some truly awful behavior and looked the other way. I want to be very very careful not to make allegations out of speculation but my assumption is a lot of heavy hitters in the industry witnessed or heard about illegal activities and kept quiet because they didn't want to rock the boat. 

In recent times, we've been able to witness first hand outspoken talents keeping quiet so they could continue collecting checks.

There's also a degree of blame to be placed on the wrestling media. There are at least 10-20 reporterz working the wrestling beat. If no one is capable of breaking these types of stories as connected as they supposedly are, they arent doing a very good job. If they know about these stories and arent reporting them, they are complicit as well. For better or worse, for all of the supposed journalists out there, the only journalist/reporter I have seen actually doing deep dives is Bix. He may rub a lot of people the wrong way, but at least he is trying to break stories. I don't know what the hell most of these other journalists are doing other than fishing for access/clicks.

 

 

 

 

[Greggulator]

They aren’t journalists. I doubt any of them have ever worked at any outlet outside of Wrestling Newz420 or whatever. I don’t think any of them ever worked for a local newspaper or news website or anything. Meltzer was at The National (this old daily sports newspaper that was really well regarded) but even he puts out so much speculation as “news.” 

I am an actual reporter. It’s an actual affront to me when these people say they are “journalists.” They’re not. They get emails or have Twitter conversations or pass things off from something they saw on Reddit. 

Remember before the company was sold that some goof reported that Saudi Arabia was buying the WWE? It took about five minutes for that to unravel. Or when all of these people were reporting the WWE was being sued for possibly selling the company to the Saudis (when those types of lawsuits literally happen anytime any publicly company makes news, and real business news outlets don’t report on those unless they have absolute serious merit and they very rarely do.)

Now, keep in mind with the stuff that came out this week — no one “broke” it. A public lawsuit was filed. That’s all public information and anyone can get it. The WSJ had a head’s up it was coming out most certainly since they had a photo layout on the website and were the first to report it. But that’s not “breaking” news. That was just reporting what was in a lawsuit that was filed.

The original hush money stuff the WSJ reporter? That was news the WSJ broke from a Pulitzer Award winner. This is all an educated guess — but I am guessing the reporter on the original Vince stuff heard about the absolutely awful things in the lawsuit. But he couldn’t print them unless he could verify that happened, and he couldn’t verify what happened. But once the lawsuit was filed, then the WSJ can report on it. (They also had a different reporter writing the lawsuit story from last week.)

The “what can you actually verify” thing was actually really huge when the whole “Trump was caught with Russian prostitutes and Moscow is blackmailing him” thing came out. A lot of outlets had been sitting on it for weeks because the source of the material was a former spy who now gets paid to collect dirt on politicians. Nobody ran with it unless they could verify the lurid details — and everyone was being extra careful because it’s something involving the president of the United States.  Then Buzzfeed of all places decided to say “Trump did this, according to something a political ‘researcher’ found” and all hell broke loose.

But, please. These people are not journalists. They have no idea what journalism means or entails. 

 

[Log]

@Greggulator's post should be pinned somewhere on the board as a reminder.

[Matt D]

I'd like to see Gregg write 10,000 words comparing Dave Meltzer and Hedda Hopper. 

[Zakk_Sabbath]

Its probably part of a much broader conversation we shouldn't have here/now, but I'm of the belief that we've reached the point of advancement as a tribe/society/species (however you want to phrase it) where media literacy needs to become a mandatory, standardized subject in public schools and universities in the US just the same as math, history, or anything else. The amount of otherwise perfectly rational adults I encounter on a daily basis who can't even identify an obvious phishing attempt, let alone misinformation or opinions-as-newz (both in and out of wrestling) is far, far too high.

[Godfrey]

To be fair, critical thinking used to be part of Western education systems but it was messing with the war efforts in the 20th century so they got rid of it in favor of teaching static facts (that are constantly being proven wrong and in need of updating)

[Craig H]

God , I can’t believe I’m going to defend HHH here, even though I’m kinda not, but here goes…

Tony Khan gets shit on, repeatedly, for giving boilerplate response after boilerplate response to Ariel and really everyone else that there’s an ongoing investigation and he can’t comment. Tony Khan though likely did the right thing in not wanting to discuss it, but it led to him being skewered for awhile.

Similar situation, but with a different reason for it, HHH attempts to give the other type of answer which I’ll just say is the politician or even Dana White approach and basically says it’s not something he can talk about, but tries to redirect the focus to everyone else who had success that night to, in my eyes, try to move on from the question. And so HHH is skewered for that too. Not only that, but so many people are saying he should have just given a boilerplate response and that should have been that, but that’s the exact thing everyone shit on the other guy for. Including Meltzer.

So what’s the right answer then? Nothing is going to satisfy these people unless you come right out and bury the fuck out of someone and give everyone all of the dirt and the pure unfiltered truth and details about what’s going on, which legally, you can’t and shouldn’t do. Personally, I’m fine with the boilerplate answer and think it works far better than what HHH said. At the same time, from experience, he watched everyone attack the other guy’s credibility for doing that. So, what, you just hope that most of these “reporters” are hypocrites and just accept the “I can’t comment on the details of this and that and won’t be taking any more questions on the matter?” 

And then I read how Cody’s response was much better, but honestly, he gave a non answer too. His response to what went down this week was to talk about how there’s a dark cloud hanging over, but they’re all a team and they’re all a family. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just how he said and maybe he said it with more confidence and HHH seemed to be searching for the right words to say.

I think each, HHH and Cody, tried to skate this middle ground of giving reporters what they want without giving them much of anything, as opposed to just flat out stonewalling them, and Cody sounded more confident. Either way, fuck them reporters. Just stonewall them. It’s a legal matter and a very serious one at that. They’ll keep showing back up even when they cry you didn’t give them any real response.

[Cobra Commander]

looking at NewsBank/Access World News and here are the American news sources to mention "Paul Levesque" since Saturday night

Quote

 

Orlando Sentinel: headline "Rhodes, Bayley win titles at Royal Rumble - Levesque addresses McMahon lawsuit" ("WWE chief content officer Paul Levesque, McMahon's son-in-law, diverted several questions about the lawsuit, saying he preferred to "focus on the positive" for the week")

There's a CNN Newsroom transcript ("A press conference held at the conclusion of the event. We heard from Paul Levesque. He was the most senior executive for WWE on hand. Levesque serves as chief content officer and happens to be McMahon's son-in-law. The executive chose to focus on the success of the company instead of addressing the allegations against his father-in-law. Let's take a listen.")

Marietta Daily Journal: headline "Marietta Native Cody Rhodes, Former KSU Star Bron Breakker in Spotlight at WWE's Royal Rumble" ("WWE chief content officer Paul Levesque, McMahon's son-in-law, diverted several questions about the lawsuit, saying he preferred to "focus on the positive" for the week.")

Charleston Post and Courier which is running Meltzer stuff ("Regarding the press conference last night, It kind of boggles the mind that Paul Levesque was prepared so poorly for the questions. While he couldn't have said much, he could have at least said some things. Talking about a week where the company has gotten its most mainstream news and most negative news, and clearly had aged Paul himself greatly, as a great week was a very poor choice of words.")

 

Non US sources include the Times of India, The Sun and the Daily Mail.

But that's literally the entire list. The presser got more ink in the UK than the US and probably more coverage depending on what the Mail/Sun's reach is compared to Sunday CNN.

One thing i've noticed on a few stories is that the British media does more work on picking up some US stories that really don't get a lot of coverage in the US. I guess having a million-billion British tabloids competing with each other incentivizes finding stuff that might not be in 10 other papers. Also the UK papers are better about not paywalling than the US ones.

But yeah, when it comes to the road of having to say anything in public, it's possible that Triple H can avoid having to say much else before Wrestlemania, aside from Australia, which will involve mostly Australian media and also happen at a time that it won't be seen live in the US anyway.

So he just needs to go like 2 months without pissing off Ari Emanuel/Nick Khan.

[twiztor]

20 hours ago, TheVileOne said:

I like Cody and I believe Cody is a well-intentioned guy, but his comments were also tone-deaf. 

i thought he'd be better at this sort of thing after solving racism a couple years ago.  

--just having a small bit of fun, since everything else about this whole situation is depressing and fucking horrible. i hope everybody that was actively involved loses their job and faces the full extent of the law. same for anyone that played a part in covering this (and the likely many, MANY other examples of this sort of thing) up and/or keeping it under wraps. for anybody that chose to look the other way, i hope they deal with severe consequences as well. 
but most of all, i hope none of these people can sleep at night because their conscience eats them alive. This was terrible behavior all around. BE BETTER.

[JohnnyJ]

 

17 minutes ago, Craig H said:

So what’s the right answer then? Nothing is going to satisfy these people unless you come right out and bury the fuck out of someone and give everyone all of the dirt and the pure unfiltered truth and details about what’s going on, which legally, you can’t and shouldn’t do. Personally, I’m fine with the boilerplate answer and think it works far better than what HHH said. At the same time, from experience, he watched everyone attack the other guy’s credibility for doing that. So, what, you just hope that most of these “reporters” are hypocrites and just accept the “I can’t comment on the details of this and that and won’t be taking any more questions on the matter?” 

“There are serious allegations being made about our former CEO who also happens to by my Father in Law. From a personal and professional standpoint, I am conflicted and there is understandably no way I can speak openly. What I can assure you is I personally had no knowledge regarding these allegations as they took place and make a promise that under my watch WWE will always be a friendly space for its employees and fans.

These press conferences are largely for entertainment purposes and this is not the time for fake press conferences when something so serious is happening, Tonight out of respect for the victims we will be canceling the press conference and I hope everyone can understand.“