TKO boss Ari Emanuel orders WWE founder Vince McMahon to retire from creative – a historic break in the wrestling empire.
The sex and hush money scandal surrounding WWE founder Vince McMahon, his interim resignation, his comeback coup, daughter Stephanie’s exit, the spectacular merger with UFC parent Endeavor to form the new combat sports empire TKO.
Behind the wrestling market leader WWE lie one and a half of the most turbulent years in the company’s history – now a new power shift has taken place behind the scenes. It is less sensational, but seems to have more consequences than all the previous ones put together.
At the heart of the matter: long-time company patriarch McMahon is losing his omnipotence over the former family business – no longer just on paper, but now in fact.
Ari Emanuel orders Vince McMahon to creative retreat
As longtime industry insider Dave Meltzer revealed in his Wrestling Observer newsletter over the weekend, the 78-year-old is currently no longer involved in the creative process at WWE.
Now Meltzer has added on his podcast that the withdrawal was not voluntary: TKO boss Ari Emanuel had “overruled” McMahon and decided that McMahon should not interfere in the affairs of creative director “Triple H” Paul Levesque, who is also McMahon’s son-in-law, until further notice.
Although Meltzer added that he had been clearly conveyed from WWE circles that things could change again, McMahon’s temporary partial disempowerment alone amounts to an earthquake.
“A huge story “
Meltzer called it a “huge story” and clarified the historical scope of the development: “It’s the first time Vince has been in the position his father was in 1984.” Vince McMahon Sr had run WWE predecessor WWWF for decades before ending up as little more than an employee of his son.
Four decades later, Vince McMahon, the younger, is now apparently in the same situation – which seemed to be only theory not long ago.
Indeed, the powerful Hollywood mogul Emanuel had actually given the impression that he would continue to leave McMahon with unrestricted power at WWE, despite allegations of sexual assault and other misconduct, some of which are still unresolved.
Triple H now the undisputed strong man again
Emanuel – brother of Barack Obama’s one-time chief of staff Rahm Emanuel – had stated in the spring, after the Endeavor/WWE deal, that creative at WWE was “Vince’s lane” and he wouldn’t interfere there.
Now Emanuel has done the opposite and made a weighty directional decision: the extent to which McMahon has talked his creative executive into it over decades is notorious – it was perceived as correspondingly momentous how he took back control the day after the annual highlight WrestleMania.
Levesque, who received a lot of recognition internally and externally for his work since the summer of 2022 and led the league to its biggest audience boom in decades, had since then had to come to terms again with many change requests or orders from his father-in-law.
Now everything is different again – perhaps Emanuel did not miss the fact that Vince’s work was seen more and more critically in the past years and the calls to hand over the sceptre to Levesque, who had been ousted by McMahon himself in the meantime, had become louder.
In the summer, McMahon also made new negative headlines because of a state house search for unclear reasons. He then took a break for several months because of a neck operation, but had then resumed work in mid-September, also in the creative area – which Emanuel has now stopped after a few weeks.
Did power man Emanuel deceive McMahon?
The hand-wringing loss of power is a new experience for McMahon, who has always been his own man in WWE for nearly four decades. Since TKO’s formation in mid-September, he no longer is; as terminable executive chairman, he’s now only No. 2 behind CEO Emanuel.
The new pecking order – as far as operations at WWE are concerned – seemed to exist only on paper. After the deal in the spring, Emanuel praised McMahon as an indispensable executive with whom it was “an honour” to work and whom he had actively dissuaded from alleged thoughts of retiring (“I would have given him a bodyslam if he had left”).
Did the power man, who is known as a go-getter, deceive McMahon with this charm offensive and hold out the prospect of more creative power to win him over to the lucrative deal? And now that McMahon has given him the levers of power, is he pursuing a different agenda after all?
In any case, industry insiders also noticed over the weekend that Emanuel also openly named McMahon as a contributor to the recent drop in the share price in a media interview with Bloomberg. McMahon’s age and his holding on to 34 per cent of TKO’s shares were probably a factor, Emanuel said with a noticeable sigh of relief.
