Last Friday evening, Chairman and CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) announced that he is to retire.
At first, you would think that his Twitter account was compromised, as he had only reassured talent (WWE Superstars) a mere month ago at the Money in the Bank PPV that he wasn’t going anywhere.
A follow-up announcement was published on WWE Corporate website detailing more about this. https://corporate.wwe.com/news/company-news/2022/07-22-2022a
This includes that he is to retire but still be a shareholder (He is the majority shareholder of the company) and his replacements is his daughter, Stephanie McMahon and Nick Khan as “Co-CEO’s”.
Earlier on Friday, it was announced that Paul “Triple H” Levesque had resumed his position as Executive Vice President of Talent Relations, a position that he held from the beginning of NXT (The wrestling promotion, not the gameshow) in 2013 until 2020 when he stepped back due to health concerns.
Vince’s retirement comes soon after the Wall Street Journal published 2 articles about incidents of sexual misconduct, going back to at least, the mid-2000s with ‘hush’ payments of at least $12 million being made to various people, in and out of the ring.
The first report from the Wall Street Journal, detailed about how a paralegal was hired by WWE who was paid $3 million dollar in a ‘hush’ payment from Vince, but while employed, her wages were increased from $100,000 to $200,000 during this relationship.
To date, several law firms have begun investigating these claims of sexual misconducts. As of writing, there hasn’t been any update to any of these investigations.
With Vince leaving the most prominent position in WWE since he bought then-named WWWF from his father back in 1982, Vince leaves behind a legacy that seen him sent Professional Wrestling into mainstream entertainment domination.
Without Vince, we would never have had Wrestlemania, the infamous Attitude Era, John Cena, The Rock, Batista, The Undertaker, Eddie Guerrero, Roman Reigns, Sasha Banks, plus thousands of other professional wrestlers, managers, commentators, backstage interviewers.
We wouldn’t have had the Monday Night Wars between WWF and WCW back in the 90’s. We wouldn’t have had NXT. We wouldn’t have had competition in the form of TNA (Now, IMPACT Wrestling), Combat Zone Wrestling, Game Changer Wrestling, Ring of Honor, All Elite Wrestling and multiple various different promotions that has come and gone. Indie promotions that has produced home-grown talent who have gone onto WWE to become massive households names.
Without Vince, professional wrestling would still more than likely be a circus attraction.
Now with Vince leaving the company, we are entering a new era of Professional Wrestling.
Fans are itching to see how well Stephenie and Nick can produce new and exiting superstars. The thoughts of the proverbial ‘Forbidden Door’ being swung open, just like how AEW has already opened its door with New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW) with their AEW x NJPW: Forbidden Door PPV back in June.
Some talent that are in other promotions (mainly AEW) would see this as a great opportunity to go back to a place that they worked for previously. Perhaps they were frustrated by Vince personally or the way that WWE was being run. The likes of CM Punk comes to mind. Tag teams like FTR could see themselves back in the company to be on the world stage once more.
That may not happen today, nor tomorrow thought as they are not expected to make big changes just yet.
Over the next 3 – 5 years, we will see a change in Professional Wrestling. New management, new talent, new opportunities. Younger minds making these sweeping changes that would reintroduce healthy competition between all promotions to make professional wrestling bigger and better.
In some cases, WWE as a company was/is being held back by Vince but maybe that changes. Or has the ‘powerfulness’ of Vince over the years, become second nature for the likes of Stephanie, Nick and the rest of WWE management.
I am personally excited for a new change. Not just lipstick on a turd and blaming Baron Corbin for poor ratings.
