Vince, WWE Stock and #MeToo

By Scott Keith on July 28, 2018

Hey Scott,

Just curious what you thought about this. The pro wrestling industry as I understand It as a fan of 20-something years can be a pretty despicable place, fraught with sexual harassment, drug abuse, early death, adultery, and all kinds of emotional and physical abuse.

It's gone mostly unchecked because wrestling for decades has been seen as a low-brow carny attraction for the fringes.

But now that WWE is a force on Wall Street, It really legitimizes McMahon as a mainstream businessman. Their events are some of the most major attractions for big cities — New York City, for example, leads with WrestleMania in all their press conferences for 2019 — and their outreach to women's wrestling and foreign markets has garnered them attention in mainstream news outlets.

So — now I feel like investigations into McMahon's sexually harassing past (is their any doubt he has one?) and that of other wrestlers seems like It could get picked up by mainstream news and be damaging to their stock. Just today, allegations of Les Moonves led to CVS stock dropping 6%.

I feel like they're in a tough spot: they want mainstream attention and money, but with that comes more scrutiny, and WWE does not want their past scrutinized. Thoughts?

Yeah, I dunno. Vince has survived far sleazier scandals in the past, but those were in the days before Twitter. I can't even imagine how badly things would have gone with the steroid trials and Patterson/Garvin allegations had social media been around in the 80s. Vince even dodged a bullet with the Del Rio incident somehow.

Who knows, though, the stock market is so weird.

Comments are disable in preview.