The final days of January 2024 will go down as one of the most pivotal weeks in WWE history. One day, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was being appointed to the WWE Board of Directors within hours of WWE Monday Night Raw landing a deal with Netflix. Two days later, a new lawsuit accused Vince McMahon, the executive chairman of WWE parent company TKO, of sex trafficking. Roughly 24 hours after that lawsuit was made public, McMahon resigned from his role as TKO Executive Chairman. WWE soldiered on, producing the successful WWE Royal Rumble premium live event that weekend, but questions about that looming dark cloud remain.
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Netflix CCO Shuts Down Vince McMahon’s WWE Involvement
Netflix is looking past Vince McMahon.
Speaking during the Next on Netflix event, Netflix Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria dismissed a question about how the streamer feels about the recent allegations against McMahon.
“Well, Vince McMahon, he’s gone,” Bajaria said. “He’s not there. He’s gone.”
McMahon’s relationship with Netflix prior to his TKO resignation is unclear. While he acted as executive chairman of the company, there is no word on the part he played, if any, in landing WWE Monday Night Raw on Netflix. WWE President Nick Khan was most known as the primary negotiator when it came to WWE’s television rights.
McMahon’s WWE power had been significantly dwindled in the years leading up to his resignation. In mid-2022, McMahon stepped down from his positions as WWE Chairman and CEO during a sexual misconduct investigation. Months later, he retired from WWE altogether, leaving the company’s reins in the hands of Khan, daughter Stephanie McMahon, and Paul “Triple H” Levesque. In January 2023, McMahon used his majority shareholder power to reinstate himself to the WWE Board of Directors, citing a desire to help sell WWE to an external bidder. The months that followed saw McMahon slowly reassume the powers he had prior to his retirement.
Upon WWE’s sale to Endeavor, and the subsequent merger with UFC that formed TKO, McMahon’s WWE powers gradually regressed. Higher executives saw McMahon’s meddling with WWE’s management team and on-screen product as being outside of his defined responsibilities, which led to him exclusively contributing to TKO from the corporate side of things. His recent resignation erases all of his powers on paper, but there are those that believe McMahon’s fingerprints remain on the WWE product via his former allies.
