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The Wall Street Journal Vince McMahon Thread.

dragonzombie
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It's a gross story, don't stare too deeply into the abyss or it will stare back.

Also be adults and don't make us ban you.

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Elsalvajeloco

Elsalvajeloco

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13 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

I wonder if the feds officially consider Vince a flight risk.

You know what will make him a flight risk? Trying to leave the country under the cover of darkness.

He might not be one now, but I am pretty sure they have steady tabs on him.

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odessasteps

odessasteps

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If he wasn’t so radioactive, I couldhave seen him going with the company to the  next KSA show and then conveniently staying behind for “negotiations” and not leaving. 

Edited by odessasteps
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Elsalvajeloco

Elsalvajeloco

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5 hours ago, zendragon said:

Can you be considered a flight risk if you haven’t been charged?

There is a weird grey area where technically if you're free and clear like any average citizen, you *should* be able to go and leave as freely. And if nothing seems out of the ordinary, then yes.

However, if you've had one of your residences or multiple in the case of Sean Combs raided, it's probably going to be look weird if you're going to some random country when you yourself don't really travel abroad. Hell, when did Vince ever take a vacation or venture out not tied to WWE? I have heard hours and hours of people talking about Vince and not heard anything saying he just loves to travel around the world. I dunno. Maybe he's like Hyman Roth in Godfather Part II and just wants to return to his home country in the twilight of his life.

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Elsalvajeloco

Elsalvajeloco

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9 hours ago, odessasteps said:

If he wasn’t so radioactive, I couldhave seen him going with the company to the  next KSA show and then conveniently staying behind for “negotiations” and not leaving. 

....Yeah, I dunno if you want that if you're WWE. That might look like aiding and abetting. 

It's interesting cause recently in boxing Tyson Fury's American promoter/co-promoter Top Rank had that association with Daniel Kinahan. I saw recently an article where Bob Arum (who is legit 92 years old) when asked about Kinahan and his reputation as a crime figure, he basically said, "yeah, we looked him up on Google and it's not exactly something that's hidden" as a reason they dissociated themselves with Kinahan. Outside of the fact that a near 100 year man is just browsing on Google being hilarious, you cannot feign ignorance in these situations. Granted, Arum was a big shot lawyer before being a boxing promoter so he has a leg up on the average person in these matters.

It would look really bad if WWE, knowing they have someone traveling with them who is in hot water OR in this case, potentially in hot water, go over and then just never return. What are you gonna say? He went there of his own accord on his own private jet?

1 hour ago, zendragon said:

Russell Simmons moved to Barbados I believe after his accusations, I don’t see how the government could stop you if your not being charged or have a warrant out

Russell has a place in Barbados and had businesses there before that. He didn't technically "escape" there. That would have been a huge story. Also I think he was/is living in Bali at the time of the allegations and current situation. I believe he just got recently served as well. Either way, Russell then wasn't in the level of trouble Vince is to be "perceived" in now. In the Time's Up movement, out of the all those people that got caught up, how many actually got charged or investigated like Harvey Weinstein? It's probably why the movement died down substantially a few years later. There was Danny Masterson and Kevin Spacey, but that's a drop in the bucket compared to the sheer number of people involved.

And also, it's the U.S. government. They can do a lot of things they technically shouldn't be able to do. However, that's a totally different argument and not really fit for this board.

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SirSmUgly

SirSmUgly

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11 hours ago, zendragon said:

Russell Simmons moved to Barbados I believe after his accusations, I don’t see how the government could stop you if your not being charged or have a warrant out

Was just going to mention him, though I thought he was in Brazil. 

I checked, and as of late, he's chilling in Indonesia on the beaches of Bali. 

From Wikipedia, so only take the veracity of this somewhat seriously:

Quote

The United States does not have an extradition treaty with China, Indonesia, Iran, Mongolia, Russia, Taiwan, Ukraine, Vietnam, the GCC states, most African states, and most former Soviet states, among others.

Seems like Bali is probably a good bet for an escape route if you're insanely wealthy and want to live like a royal. 

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clintthecrippler

clintthecrippler

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6 hours ago, zendragon said:

Imagine going back to 96 Survivor Series when the Rock locks up with HHH and telling people "in three decades those two will be running the show and Vince might be headed to prison" 

Before or after you tell people that the now red-hot WCW will be out of business less than five years later?

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SirSmUgly

SirSmUgly

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1 hour ago, clintthecrippler said:

Before or after you tell people that the now red-hot WCW will be out of business less than five years later?

I'd be engrossed to see how that all turns out and then be disappointed at how stupid it all was (and, in Vince's case, disgusting).

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Elsalvajeloco

Elsalvajeloco

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3 hours ago, clintthecrippler said:

Before or after you tell people that the now red-hot WCW will be out of business less than five years later?

Shit, it's believable. Look at World Class, Mid South, and Jim Crockett. Probably one or two I'm leaving out. All had banner years and out of business, sold, or downhill shortly afterwards. Tough business pre TV rights and other consistent revenue streams.

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Elsalvajeloco

Elsalvajeloco

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2 hours ago, odessasteps said:

The company had 6/7 bad years (depending on how you classify 1989) and then had 2 red hot years. Easy to belive the bubble would burst (finger poked). 

I would say it's always tough when you basically inherited another business that wasn't doing well. To me, WCW truly begins at 1990 when most of the Crockett stuff in terms of talent has been shaken out. Most of the people who wanted to go work for Vince have. Most of the stuff you identify with JCP is gone.

So the first few years were really rough though IIRC the TV ratings were pretty good. It picks up in the second half of 1994 when they acquire the services of Hogan and then pick up Savage at the end of the year. 1995 they do solid business mostly off Hogan. The next 2 and 1/2 years are stellar. Then, the rollercoaster starts slowly clicking down in the 2nd half of 1998. Then, it's an outright free fall by the middle of 1999.

But yeah, IMO, if you tell them they're going out of business in November 1996, they probably wouldn't believe you. However, if you provide some level of context, they probably would.

And to be fair, WWF's hot run during the Attitude era was roughly the same as WCW in terms of length. Like how long do you expect businesses to stay red hot realistically? I think it's easier now when you have the comfort of people paying to put you on TV and you're able to explore different routes to bring in revenue and potentially turn a profit. However, at the same time, TV is structured in a way now where an average wrestling show isn't going to be averaging 5 or 6 million viewers weekly. You're not going to be galvanize people at a level you did before. Weekly live TV is no longer a novelty. Having an overrun is no longer a novelty. You have to take the good with the bad.

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SirSmUgly

SirSmUgly

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9 hours ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

Shit, it's believable. Look at World Class, Mid South, and Jim Crockett. Probably one or two I'm leaving out. All had banner years and out of business, sold, or downhill shortly afterwards. Tough business pre TV rights and other consistent revenue streams.

That's kinda what makes WCW being sold for a song so unbelievable in late 1996, early 1997, though. WCW had access to a myriad of revenue streams. 

What's really shocking is that they didn't use them. No one in WCW or at Turner recognized that hiring an in-house composer and then selling wrestler theme songs back to consumers was a good idea. We instead got Jimmy Hart pop song knockoffs and catalog music already licensed by Turner. They did well enough with video games and okay with selling nWo t-shirts, but their merchandising was mediocre for the time period and they really wasted a lot of licensing opportunities.

To swing this back around to Vince, one thing he understood was how to extract maximum dollars for his asset, whether that meant a book deal with fictionalized backstories for some of his characters or getting some of that Gulf State oil money. Bischoff/Schiller/Sassa/Turner as an entity didn't come anywhere near that. 

Now, had I known more of the backstory at the time that Turner didn't see WCW as something to exploit along multiple revenue streams or a low-cost in-house fountain of programming with a bunch of past shows to sell and re-sell to interested wrestling fanatics, then it wouldn't have been so shocking. But without that knowledge, I think in the post-territories era of pro wrestling, yeah, I would have been baffled to hear that they went out of business and disappointed that they only went out of business because zero people at Turner/AOL Time Warner understood how valuable WCW was even if Nitro was pulling low 2s in the ratings by the time they died. 

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Technico Support

Technico Support

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Posted (edited)
22 hours ago, zendragon said:

Vince gonna start doing a Russian sympathizer gimmick 

Gimmick?  His party has been shoot Russian sympathizers for a few years now.

Edited by Technico Support
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Robert S

Robert S

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11 hours ago, odessasteps said:

The company had 6/7 bad years (depending on how you classify 1989) and then had 2 red hot years. Easy to belive the bubble would burst (finger poked). 

How many of those years were financially really bad or at least as bad as was reported back then? One of the biggest learnings from Nitro (the book) was that accounting at Turner & Timer Warner was a mess and the real numbers WCW did were much better than how it ended up being in the books.

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odessasteps

odessasteps

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Prob hard to tell, since they shifted money around to different departments. Would WCW have been more profitable on paper if, for example, the PPV money went on their books and not Turner Home Entertainment? 

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Elsalvajeloco

Elsalvajeloco

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I know when it came to Hogan and his pay, Bischoff absolutely denied the shifting around of money when it came to Meltzer reporting that WCW moved Hogan's salary around to make it appear WCW was more profitable than they actually were. On subsequent shows, Bischoff said other divisions within Turner got to move their losses over to WCW. So I am assuming his take is indeed that WCW had to take on everyone's losses as opposed to it being the other way around. My question is when did that stop if it did happen? If you have a budget and stay within that budget, does those losses being move over count against your budget?

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piranesi

piranesi

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He's gonna be like $80 million short of affording the golden ticket to the rich assholes secret volcano witness protection hideout and then he'll remember Linda's Senate campaign and weep of exhaustion.

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Technico Support

Technico Support

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Alvarez & Meltzer were talking over the weekend about Vince starting a new promotion (they said nah to that one) and their key question was, "who would he be able to get?"

Now come on.  That's the one problem he wouldn't have.  He could lean into the whole "people used to love me talking about my genetic jackhammer and grapefruits!  Woke wrestling cancelled me!" thing and hire every sexual predator, MAGA choad, and otherwise undesirable currently not working or not working much and looking for a payday.  Off the top of my head:

  • Marty Scurll
  • David Starr
  • Jack Gallagher
  • Joey Ryan
  • Jimmy Havoc
  • Michael Elgin
  • That one Crist brother
  • Tyrus
  • Tessa Blanchard
  • Alberto Del Rio
  • Flip Gordon
  • That one neo nazi/neo nazi-adjacent deathmatch guy whose name escapes me

Shit, he could promote it on Truth Social

Edited by Technico Support
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