Is WWE going up for sale? Will the company, which has been primarily owned by a McMahon since all the way back in 1953, when the federation, then known as Capitol Wrestling Corporation, ran its first show in New York state, suddenly find itself owned by a company like Disney, Comcast, or even a wildcard like Amazon? Or is this all for show, with Vince McMahon's return to power as a Chairman of the Board of Directors more about securing new television deals for the company before he puts his hands back on the books and rescinds many of the positive changes that his son-in-law, Paul “Triple H” Levesque, has made over the past six or so months?
As of right now, no one really knows; maybe Mr. McMahon really wants to be the man who oversees the sale of the company he turned into a billion-dollar property. Or is that more of a facade to cover up his real goal, being the man to dethrone Roman Reigns and book a WrestleMania 39 that is already pulling in record-breaking ticket sales accomplishments?
While fans have been and will continue to be debating this very question until the next shoe drops, Eric Bischoff, the WWE Hall of Famer and former RAW GM, has weighed in on the subject on his 83 Weeks podcast with Conrad Thompson and, fortunately for fans, it sure sounds like McMahon may be too busy to get into the weeds of booking seven hours of television each week.
“I just can’t imagine that Vince’s primary focus right now is to jump back in the creative saddle,” Bischoff said via Fightful. “I mean there’s a ton on his plate, of a magnitude that I just don’t think even Vince McMahon, who notoriously works 20 hours a day, I think that would be a little bit much. I think Vince is gonna be focused on stability, particularly outward-facing stability, which is why I think he went to great lengths to acknowledge Nick Khan and Stephanie and Paul Levesque in their roles and assure everybody, he did three times in one press release, or maybe in different comments, whatever, there were three different occasions that Vince made a point to say, ‘Hey, Paul and Nick and Stephanie are doing a great job. All the confidence in the world in them. Nothing is going to change.’ If that’s true, I think showing up at TV would be, even just from perception-wise, even if he just showed up and hung around backstage, it wouldn’t add to the stability of the situation right now. Couple weeks, maybe, once things settle down. But right now, I can’t see it.”
On paper, Bischoff's take makes a ton of sense and would really be the best of both worlds for a situation that few fans were hoping for in 2023; bringing Mr. McMahon to television, even if he doesn't show up on screen, would make everything about him and potentially diminished the perceived power of Levesque, Khan, and Stephanie.
Eric Bischoff believes Vince McMahon's return to WWE is all about power.
Alright, so if Mr. McMahon didn't return to WWE to book Rock-Roman Reigns at WrestleMania 39, why did he return? According to Bischoff, the answer can be summed down to one word and one word only: power.
“That’s why I said I just can’t see the primary motivation here, even a secondary motivation in this whole thing, and again, I’m setting myself up to be absolutely wrong because we’re talking about Vince McMahon,” Bischoff said. “Vince McMahon is not your typical human being and not your typical business person. What would seem to make sense for most people may or may not apply to Vince here. The word we’ve used in the last minute or two is control. I think one thing we can all agree on, regardless of how we feel about Vince McMahon one way or the other, control has always been kind of the foundation upon which Vince McMahon operates. Go back to when he took the company public. I think your average person doesn’t necessarily understand , probably doesn’t even know that there are A shares and B shares. There are two different classes of shares. One class has voting rights. That’s the one Vince owns the majority of interest in, majority of shares. The other one is along for the ride. They don’t get to vote. I find it fascinating, among many other things, that Vince structured this company [this way] and was able to do so successfully.”
“I find it fascinating that Vince, so many years ago, took the company public and was able to do with the two classes or shares architecture, and be able to be so successful with it because that structure typically turns investors off. People are generally not inclined to throw a lot of their money into a company that they know they know they don’t have a voice in, unless it’s very successful. Initially, nobody knew if this public offering from WWE was gonna be a success. But the fact that he did it, and he set himself up to be in the position that he’s in, he has the ultimate hammer. I am so fascinated by all of this. Other than Musk and Twitter, I find this to be one of the most interesting things in media and business in the last 20-30 years. I can’t think of anything, that, in my opinion, is as interesting as this.”
Though fans may not think about it all that often, the way McMahon formulated the company's public stock share is incredibly impressive, as it's the reason why he was able to retake power with one single publically-issued statement regardless of what the rest of the board felt about his decision. If Mr. McMahon wants to sell the company, it will almost exclusively be his call, as will, unfortunately, his decision to cut the amount of wrestling showcased on RAW and SmackDown and send smaller wrestlers like Ricochet back to catering.
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