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Vince McMahon is a horny old man


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7 hours ago, Craig H said:

Man…Bruce may be the only person not named Dixie Carter who would be worse than Johnny Ace at being head of talent relations.

The logical choice would have been John Cone for the role, who is actually from what I understand well liked there (maybe the only one). 

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11 hours ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

I guess we'll see. But the story has completely blown over in the public discourse.

Wrestlenomics put out a series of tweets detailing a bunch of other nasty Vince scandals and one stuck out to me. When Vince was on The Donahue Show and former ref Rita Charlton was on confronting Vince about his alleged rape of her, Donahue took questions from the audience. The first woman asked ' but isn't all that wrestling fake anyways'? As if caring if a rape happened or not was immaterial to making sure everyone knew that she knew wrestling is fake. That's how all the media outlets are treating this.
 

That's where I'm at with it. People are enamored by the "but it's fake" talking point. It's more important to the average non fan to show that they know this is all fake than it is to stay on task and talk about whatever the serious issue is. Vince has already been on TV twice and been cheered. The ratings for Smackdown were up. No business partner or sponsor is going to care that an old man hooked up with an employee and paid her a bunch of his own money. ESPECIALLY when there is no fan or public backlash or outrage. And when it even IMPROVED business.


Dude's going to get away with it just like everything else he's survived the last 40 years.

A one night bump in TV ratings is not improved business. It's a lot of people tuning into a car wreck. 

In terms of the business side of things: The WWE locks in money for a long time from its broadcast partners, Mattel, etc. There are always a lot of out clauses for different sorts of things that can break up a partnership. Vince paying $3 million in hush money to a mistress from his own checkbook is not likely one of those things. 

As of now: It's not criminal. It's not an allegation of sexual harassment. It's not multiple allegations of sexual harassment. It's not sexual assault. The woman signed a NDA and we have no idea what she would disclose with the NDA in place.

Now, if we get to a place where it turns out there are 10 other NDAs in place, or if some of the hush money at some point came from a WWE check and not a Vince McMahon check, it's a different story entirely. Because that shows a history of someone abusing their power as the CEO of a corporation and/or using shareholder money to cover up an abuse of power. Then there are usually morals clauses and that sort of thing that means a partner can get out of a partnership. 

But a breakup of that sort would not go down without a fight. There would be lawsuits -- and I mean actual lawsuits, not a law firm paying $250 or so to issue a press release on BusinessWire -- over this level of fighting. 

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One other pro-tip: Wait to see what reporting on this gets done but places like the Wall Street Journal or NY Times or Bloomberg or even some of the Hollywood trade press like Variety or Hollywood Reporter. Those are places with legitimate journalism. They are doing follow-ups on this.

But if it's something on TV like CNBC or Fox Business -- 

I worked in public relations for a few years before just moving back into journalism a few months ago. A bunch of my clients were wealth managers/stock pickers who go on TV and ask questions from reporters about the news of the day and whether Disney should be a buy or not and etc.

I would literally write the questions for my clients the anchors would eventually ask. I'd write a bunch of questions, go over the answers with the client, and then fire them off to a producer. And they'd then do an interview with my client probably an hour or so later. An anchor might ask a question we didn't prep for on occasion but 90 percent of the time the questions were exactly what me and/or my team would write. 

I never did anything for CNN, but it's still the same exact same for a lot of what they do. The questions are heavily prepped ahead of time. That's why you very rarely see anyone actually challenged on those shows even though they should be.  

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13 hours ago, Greggulator said:

A one night bump in TV ratings is not improved business. It's a lot of people tuning into a car wreck. 

In terms of the business side of things: The WWE locks in money for a long time from its broadcast partners, Mattel, etc. There are always a lot of out clauses for different sorts of things that can break up a partnership. Vince paying $3 million in hush money to a mistress from his own checkbook is not likely one of those things. 

As of now: It's not criminal. It's not an allegation of sexual harassment. It's not multiple allegations of sexual harassment. It's not sexual assault. The woman signed a NDA and we have no idea what she would disclose with the NDA in place.

Now, if we get to a place where it turns out there are 10 other NDAs in place, or if some of the hush money at some point came from a WWE check and not a Vince McMahon check, it's a different story entirely. Because that shows a history of someone abusing their power as the CEO of a corporation and/or using shareholder money to cover up an abuse of power. Then there are usually morals clauses and that sort of thing that means a partner can get out of a partnership. 

But a breakup of that sort would not go down without a fight. There would be lawsuits -- and I mean actual lawsuits, not a law firm paying $250 or so to issue a press release on BusinessWire -- over this level of fighting. 

The WSJ article mentions that there are over a dozen NDAs from incidents over the years.

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4 hours ago, JLowe said:

The WSJ article mentions that there are over a dozen NDAs from incidents over the years.

And unfortunately they weren't able to get the details of the NDAs yet or else they'd print them.

That's why this story has legs. If the WSJ or someone else gets proof of the NDAs and settlements and etc., then those will come out. The board supposedly learned of their discovery in the initial investigation. 

My hunch is that the WSJ most likely has at least some of that information and it's working on a Part 2 once it gets some more reporting done. They might be working on getting someone who signed a NDA to speak without printing a name, confirming that a NDA was signed with a performer, some people to go on the record about Vince or Luarinitis's behavior, etc. 

Meanwhile, at the same time, Vince and his lawyer and whatever crisis communications PR firm they hired are putting together a defense dossier or whatever to prepare for the spin efforts. And I would also assume his lawyer is going through the NDAs to see how airtight they actually are.  

In a normal circumstance, everything would be framed with a canned quote (Vince gave one of those in the WSJ article -- I doubt he actually said that, but it was more attributed to him). But since Vince is fucking crazy, he might even be interested in doing an interview thinking he'll be able to outspin a Pulitzer Prize winning Wall Street Journal reporter. 

I had to do some crisis communications when I was still working in public relations. My client at the time did things involving subprime mortgages and securitizing them -- stuff from The Big Short. (Vomit.) They had someone on the junior end of their executive team get in trouble for something and Bloomberg or someone of the like was going to write an article about it.

One of the senior executives kept screaming about how unfair it was for the media to report on them and it was some reporter looking to make a name for himself at the expense of their firm. Really hard for me to tell him "Your firm is bragging about being a leader in a sector of finance that ruined the global economy. I'd hope reporters are going to ask you questions. Also, your firm is not Goldman Sachs and nobody is making a career writing an article about your company." 

PR is a fucking nightmare. It has to be so fucking bad to do that for Vince McMahon right now.

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I get that you're coming from a place of knowledge and experience. And I truly hope that's how it's all playing out behind the scenes. I'm just very cynical on it all, at least when it comes to this specific business.

This isn't a financial sector company. This isn't a well esteemed production company in Hollywood. This is that 'fake rasslin stuff' to the masses. The way forward for them is ignorance and playing up that 'huyck huyck scucks guys it's just rasslin' stance.

They've already won the first battle. What respectable company under investigation gets away with the well he's stepping down as CEO for now but he's staying on as the head of creative? Like he's still the head of the on screen product they put out. Again to compare it to Weinstien if he was like okay guys I'm going to step down as CEO of this production company.... buuttttt I'm staying on as the writer and director for every movie the company still produces that would not have worked. It's already worked for Vince. No one cares.

As much as they try to shed the wrestling image and transform it into sports entertainment to look legitimate, it's still just that 'silly rasslin' and that's will save Vince's ass. (Again hope I'm wrong, that's just my pessimistic take on what's played out).

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18 hours ago, (BP) said:

He gave the paralegal a 100% rate increase after they started screwing. That’s company money I’d imagine. 

That's not enough company money directly to make anyone like the SEC or DOJ or anyone really upset. And a sketchy salary bump and promotion is something that a company can easily explain away even with everyone understanding the real reasons -- "She was a top performer, she exceeded expectations, etc." as long as HR has it in writing. 

You could even make a case that if the $3 million came from the WWE's checking account it's not that big a deal in terms of overall finance considering how much revenue they make. But it's salacious enough if it comes from the WWE directly and not Vince that regulators are going to come around and asking questions about "how is this showing a fiduciary responsibility to investors?" and there's no answer to that.

I hope that I'm not coming off like I'm defending the WWE or Vince. 

But this doesn't happen at most companies. At all. There's no way at all that, say, the CEO of Exxon would survive this. They'd be asked to resign immediately.

Edited by Greggulator
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On 6/21/2022 at 12:17 AM, TheVileOne said:

John Laurinaitis is now on administrative leave, and Bruce Prichard has been named interim head of talent relations, pending the conclusion of the investigation, per PWInsider.

The administrative leave thing feels pretty par for the course. They can't fire John without showing cause or else he'll be able to file a big lawsuit. So the board needs to just cross all of the t's and dot all of the i's on that first. He'll still probably be able to file a big lawsuit if he wants. But they might also just pay him pretty quickly to go away.

But one thing that's a huge risk for the WWE is if women made complaints to HR about John before. I know we've all heard stories and rumors but who the hell knows what's true or not. But if it comes out there have been a whole bunch made against him over the years and the company took no action then there's going to be a ton of stuff coming out. 

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Vince will have to step down as CEO and chairman for good and WWE has to can Johnny Ace, if anything comes out.

Still expect Vince to run Gorilla and Creative.

Edited by Blue Dragon
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On 6/21/2022 at 11:14 PM, Casey said:

It wasn't even just a pay increase, didn't she allegedly get a huge promotion after she started sleeping with McMahon (and Ace, I guess?)

and they say Vince hates tag teams. Pshhh

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2 hours ago, Pedro said:

and they say Vince hates tag teams. Pshhh

He does. But this fucker loves his handicap matches. And partners that hate each other. Partners that hate each other handicap match hookup is right up the old man's alley.

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4 hours ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

He does. But this fucker loves his handicap matches. And partners that hate each other. Partners that hate each other handicap match hookup is right up the old man's alley.

I'll thank you to never give me the mental image of something being up Vince's "old man alley" ever again. I'll go throw up about something else now

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6 hours ago, Gordlow said:

The same two people would fight again and again, going approximately 50/50 until the premium live event where whichever guy the fans like least goes over?

Hey is this WWE or the White House? Read more sharp observations like this in my new book Vince McMahon: American Voltaire. 

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Maybe this goes in the book thread, but the author of that article (Abraham Riesman, who wrote the phenomenal Stan Lee biography, TRUE BELIEVER) announced today that she has a book about Vince (RINGMASTER) coming out next year. Can’t wait.

Edited by EVA
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