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World Wrestling Entertainment is taking big steps to grow its audience, including moving its flagship live weekly show, “Raw,” to Netflix next year. But the professional wrestling giant is undergoing these changes with the notable absence of its founder, Vince McMahon Jr.
McMahon, 78 years old, give up as executive chairman of the WWE board of directors last week after a former employee filed a lawsuit accusing him and former wrestler-turned-executive John Laurinaitis of sexual abuse and trafficking. The allegations, which McMahon has denied and Laurinaitis did not respond to, overshadowed the company’s momentous week, beginning with $5 billion Announcement of the Netflix agreement and that ends with a record crowd at the WWE “Royal Rumble” event.
McMahon’s departure puts the wrestling business in uncharted waters: for the first time in four decades, none of the four McMahons: Vince; his wife Linda; and his children, Stephanie and Shane, are at the helm of the company.
While the leadership change poses a challenge and refocuses attention on sexism within WWE, which the organization has sought to combat, some professional wrestling insiders and academics who study the industry see this moment as an opportunity. for the company. With new executives in charge and the move to Netflix, WWE could try more mature themes and reach new international audiences, becoming an even bigger cultural giant than it already is.
“This will be the first time we’ll be able to see wrestling that is progressive, not just in theory, but in practice,” said DeWitt King, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Irvine, who has studied and written about Wrestling Culture. free professional. “It won’t be perfect, it won’t happen as quickly as people would like, but there is scope for change. “People have to realize that wrestling was always on a different timeline than other sports.”
WWE has long clashed criticism that overly sexualized the female characters, including derogatory scripts about women and discriminated against Against female talent. However, it has evolved. WWE expanded its women’s division, which it stopped referring to as “Divas” in 2016, and has not held a “bra and panties“Party in years.
WWE, which has 90 million fans in the country, has said that women now represent almost 40% from the fan base.
While McMahon’s departure may provide an opportunity for WWE to become more progressive, it also presents some serious obstacles.
On Monday, MoffettNathanson, a prominent Wall Street analyst firm, argued that the new lawsuit against McMahon, who remains the company’s largest individual shareholder, poses “legal and brand risks” for TKO Group, the parent company of WWE and Ultimate Fighting Championship. TKO said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in September that its business could take a financial hit due to increased scrutiny from McMahon while he was on the board. The filing also revealed that federal agents had executed a search warrant and served a federal grand jury subpoena on McMahon, but did not provide additional details.
A representative for McMahon declined to comment for this story and referred NBC News to a statement issued last week. In the statement, McMahon denied the lawsuit’s allegations, which included graphic text messages he is accused of sending to a former employee describing violent sexual encounters. “I intend to vigorously defend myself against these baseless allegations and look forward to clearing my name,” he said in a statement last week.
TKO said in a statement that company leaders take “the horrific allegations very seriously and are addressing this matter internally.”
A company spokesperson said that after McMahon’s payments became public, WWE enacted new policies, updated its code of conduct and conducted mandatory training for all employees. The company said in a SEC Filing that its internal review of McMahon’s payments concluded that the organization’s financial reporting protocols were ineffective and reviewed its financial statements.
Eric Bischoff, who ran World Championship Wrestling, WWE’s main competitor at the turn of the century, sees difficulties ahead.
“This is going to be painful, it’s going to be ugly, it’s going to be a huge distraction for everyone involved, but WWE will survive,” he said.
For decades, McMahon was the preeminent leader of the professional wrestling industry, purchasing the organization that would become the WWE from his father in 1982 and subsequently absorbing competitors and bankrupting them. The company produced megastars such as Hulk Hogan, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, John Cena and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who just joined the TKO Group board of directors.
Over the years, McMahon survived numerous scandals that threatened his reign. The company’s first female referee, Rita Chatterton, accused McMahon of rape in 1992; he disputed the accusation of him and came to a settlement with her last year. He also faced federal conspiracy charges accusing him of orchestrating steroid use among WWE wrestlers; It was found not guilty by a jury in 1994.
In 2022, The Wall Street Journal revealed McMahon had agreed to pay millions of dollars to four women formerly affiliated with WWE for non-disclosure agreements to suppress allegations that he engaged in sexual misconduct and extramarital affairs. McMahon resigned and the company opened an internal review of the payments. WWE later said in a SEC Filing that McMahon had agreed to more than $14 million in payments to address misconduct allegations from 2006 to 2022, which should have been recorded as business expenses.
McMahon returned to the company and became chairwoman of the board of directors in January 2023. Stephanie McMahon, her daughter, who had become co-CEO in her father’s absence, left the company upon her return.
Former WWE CEO Linda McMahon left the company in 2009. She served as head of the Small Business Administration under President Donald Trump and is currently president of America First Action, a pro-Trump political spending group. The McMahons have donated to the Republican candidates and organizations for decades.
The board made a risky move by bringing back Vince McMahon last year, said Bischoff, a WWE Hall of Famer who ran its “SmackDown” show in 2019 and is not currently involved with the company. But now that he’s gone and his legacy is ruined, Bischoff said he presents an opportunity for Paul Levesque, WWE’s chief content officer, who may have more freedom to make changes.
“If I were an analyst, my advice would be to not worry at all about the fact that Vince McMahon is gone,” Bischoff said. “In fact, I would be more optimistic because of it.”
McMahon’s absence is unlikely to bother WWE fans, said Sean Oliver, who has produced professional wrestling videos for decades. Oliver said older fans are ready for new leadership, while younger fans already see Levesque, who wrestled as “Triple H” until his retirement in 2022 and is married to Stephanie McMahon, as the figurehead of the company.
“They will take what Vince McMahon built and advance it for the next 50 years,” Oliver continued, “hopefully free of lewd texts and wildly unprofessional behavior that no one in a corporate environment should ever engage in.”
But the decision to allow McMahon to return to WWE leadership last year still needs to be taken into account, said Lisa Banks, an attorney who represented sexual harassment victims who worked for NFL teams and the U.S. Coast Guard. . WWE needs to acknowledge that it made mistakes by not releasing McMahon sooner, she said, and make sure the corporate culture doesn’t indicate that the organization condones such behavior.
“You need to have strong policies, strong training and be willing to impose consequences on people who engage in sexual harassment or assault,” Banks said. “For decades, WWE executives have chosen to turn the other cheek or look the other way, and that is not acceptable.”
King, the UC Irvine scholar who also previously trained as a professional wrestler, said many women, queer people and people of color who are fans of professional wrestling have long had a complicated relationship with representations of people like them. . She said the leadership change is a perfect time for WWE to embrace younger fans’ demands for better representation.
“People should be able to enjoy it without having to feel guilty,” he said.