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On the night of Friday, January 26, Vince McMahon resigned from all of his roles in WWE and its parent company TKO Group.
The move came about 36 hours after Janel Grant’s lawsuit against McMahon and the professional wrestling company she ran for decades made headlines with disturbing details about the abuse and exploitation the former WWE employee alleges. suffered while in a relationship with McMahon. He seemed to be specifically motivated by a major sponsor’s decision to withdraw from WWE. Real battle event due to those accusations (Slim Jim would re-team with the January 27 show the morning after McMahon resigned).
News of McMahon’s resignation came via a leaked internal message from WWE Chairman Nick Khan to company employees and a press statement from McMahon. This morning (January 29) TKO made it official, informing the United States Securities and Exchange Commission of McMahon’s departure in a Form 8-K filing:
Item 5.02 Departure of Directors or Certain Officials; Election of Directors; Appointment of Certain Officials; Compensatory agreements of certain officials.
On January 26, 2024, Vincent K. McMahon notified the board of directors (the “Board”) of TKO Group Holdings, Inc. (“TKO”) of his resignation from his positions as Executive Chairman and member of the Board, and any other position, employment or otherwise, held at TKO and its subsidiaries, in each case, effective immediately as of January 26, 2024.
McMahon resigned from WWE once before, during an investigation into allegations of payments he made to ensure the silence of Grant and other women. That time, he was able to use his control of the vast majority of WWE voting stock to generate a return against the wishes of the Board of Directors. With the sale to Endeavor and the creation of TKO, he no longer has that power, so it is very likely that there will not be a path back to the company for McMahon this time.